Where cosmetic Botox softens wrinkles, so-called “résumé Botox” does the same for job seekers’ applications, making them appear younger to prospective employers. That might mean removing or editing graduation years, early jobs, senior titles, and profile photos, all in the service of obscuring an applicant’s real age.
The practice is more common than you might think. A new survey suggests that nearly half of job seekers are manipulating their résumés to seem younger—and many of them are using AI to do it.
The survey, which was conducted by Use.AI, polled 4,263 users of the AI platform who had applied for a job in the past 12 months. More than four in 10 (42%) said they’d removed or changed details on their résumés or LinkedIn profiles to appear younger or less senior.
Attempts to appear younger were more common among women than men, with 53% of women aged 45 and older having made these changes to their résumé, compared to 35% of men in the same age range.
These job seekers said they’re making these changes due to fear of ageism in the hiring process, citing both human hiring managers and AI agents as possible culprits of age discrimination. Of those who had changed their résumés to appear younger, 56% said they believed human recruiters would filter out their applications, while 38% said they thought AI screeners would do the same.
Amid those AI-fueled anxieties, nearly three-quarters (72%) of those making changes to their résumés were using AI to do so. However, given that those surveyed are already users of Use.AI, their rates of AI use may not reflect those of the wider population.
Many of those who’d attempted to appear younger said the strategy had paid off: 43% said they received more interviews after editing their résumes or LinkedIn profiles, compared to just 10% who said they’d received fewer.
Ageism in the workplace
Job seekers’ fears of age discrimination aren’t unfounded. A recent survey by AARP found that two-thirds of workers aged 50 and older have seen or experienced ageism in the workplace, with 91% of those workers saying they believe age discrimination against older workers is common. Within that figure, 36% say they believe it is very common.
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed (22%) also reported feeling they are being pushed out of their job due to their age.
In practice, age discrimination at work takes many forms. Many over-50 workers reported experiencing subtle expressions of age discrimination, including being assumed to be less tech-savvy than younger employees (33%), being seen as resistant to change (24%), having their accomplishments and expertise go ignored (20%), being the butt of jokes about generational differences (21%), and being passed over for training in favor of younger employees (20%).
Carly Roszkowski, vice president of financial resilience programming at AARP, said the survey results are relevant to all workers, as ageism is “the one discrimination that we all will go through.”
“We are part of an environment and a society that is obsessed with youth,” Roszkowski said. “We need to be really trying to break down those barriers and those stereotypes across all generations.”
