In Singapore, mature job seekers tend to face a bunch of challenges that fresh graduates and younger applicants don’t. As the years go by, employees perceive older workers to be more experienced but less skilled and more resistant to change.
Follow the steps below to make your CV more appealing:
1. Exclude Dates
Using dates in your resume can be a huge mistake. A word of advice, if you’ve left school for more than 5 years, it’s best to leave dates off your resume. Don’t forget to remove dates for college, advanced-level degrees, high school, or any other certifications you’ve earned. Keep in mind that it’s best to not tell us of any positions you’ve held longer than 10 or 12 years ago.
2. Remove Unrelated Experiences
Let’s say you’ve been in the workforce for 20 years, you wouldn’t want to include all your work experience in your resume. This could make you overqualified. It isn’t necessary to go back 20 years or more to show you’re qualified. You want your resume to be a simple, two-page document. We recommend filling up your resume with the most recent positions you’ve had.
3. Share Your Skills
Don’t be shy! Especially if you’re technologically savvy! There is a belief amongst employers that older job seekers tend to struggle more with technology.
So share your skills with us! If you’re savvy enough to edit videos or use Adobe Photoshop with a keen designer’s eye, it will make you so much more marketable. Some popular in-demand skills include:
- Cloud computing
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Analytical Reasoning
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Translation and/or foreign language skills
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Social Media Marketing
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People Management
Don’t think you have any in-demand skills to show for? You can upskill yourselves through Singapore’s Skillsfuture program, take on short courses at some of our polytechnics, or even interning!
4. Tailor Your Resume
Probably the most common mistake older job seekers tend to make is not tailoring their resumes according to the various positions they’ve applied. This gives the recruiter the impression that the mature job seeker is too experienced for the job position.
Here’s how you can personalize your resume:
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Find out what kind of employee the company wants, based on its job ad. You don’t have to research the company intently, just highlight the qualifications needed and the first few job responsibilities mentioned in the ad.
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Remove unrelated job experiences. For instance, if you’re applying to be a receptionist, remove positions that make you seem overqualified.
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Provide evidence (numbers, stats, facts, figures) to help sell your experience. Good examples include your past KPI’s for each job experience and
If you’re on the lookout for a retirement job, then tailor your resume as such. If you’re on the lookout for a retirement job (with a significant pay cut), leave out any high ranking experiences that will make you sound overqualified.
5. Just tell us why
Don’t forget to just tell the recruiters why you’d like this job position. Sometimes, the years of experience under your belt makes you overqualified for specific positions.
Stop beating around the bush and trying to impress us with your experience. We want to know the reason why you’ll be willing to either take a lesser paying job or a position that requires less experience.
So after going through all the trouble of tailoring your resume, keep the recruiter interested in you by showing how passionate you are, give them a reason to hire you in your cover letter.
Overcoming Barriers
One way to overcome future job hurdles as a mature job seeker is by planning your career properly. Employees also tend to believe in the mantra, “you can’t train an old dog new tricks”. In fact, 74% of mature workers in Singapore have good transferable skills and 65% have better customer service. Prove them wrong by taking the opportunity to constantly upskill yourself!
Sometimes, recruiters forget those mature employees can be beneficial to a company. In Singapore, mature workers bring in a host of benefits. 86% of mature workers exude soft skills such as higher loyalty and commitment, whilst an additional 84% is reported to have a stronger work ethic.
Are you on the lookout for a job? Drop us your resume with Singapore's manpower agency for more job opportunities!
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