An Interview To Dye For

You've just landed the interview of a lifetime

Here's the story.  You are an "experienced" worker who just landed an interview for the job of your dreams.  It's everything you could ask for.  The job is close to home, pays well, and is right up your alley.  You have the right skills, you have the right amount of education and you have well more than the called for number of years experience, and that experience is in the same industry.  So far so good.

Since you are an informed job seeker you have done your research on this target company.  In addition to fair pay, they treat their employees well and their benefits package is good.  Digging a little deeper you find several things.  The company is doing quite well financially even in the down market, was founded in the mid 90's, has a reputation for expecting a lot from their employees (> 50 hrs/wk) and they take great pride in having high energy and a young spirit.  You also find that the median age of their employees is less than 30 years old.

Your age shows in your appearance

Now, we all know that age discrimination is not legal in this country (excuse me a moment while I stifle a hearty laugh).  We also know that people in our demographic (over 45 or 50) wear their experience in their hair color and for some of the men in beard and mustache color as well.  So what to do.

Sell the value of your experience not the age of your body

Let's look at this pragmatically.  You, the job seeker, need to understand what value you bring to the job versus what younger people bring.  A younger person may bring more current education, perhaps more energy, perhaps more willingness to work 60 hours a week.  You, on the other hand, bring job experience, an ability to work better with people (as a general rule), a sense of direction, an ability to see where things are leading (since you been down the same path before) and maybe more reliability .  You're also not as likely to go on maternity leave (another topic that is illegal for a hiring manager to consider - right).  What you are selling about yourself is that you can leverage your experience to get the job done faster since you've been doing it for many years, get the job done right the first time, and can do the job better through your experience in past companies.  This is what you need to sell.  This is your marketing strategy.

Should you try to look younger?

So, getting back to the title of this blog.  No matter what, if you're 45 or older, nothing you do will convince someone that you're 25 or 30.  But, will looking a few years younger by dying out the gray hair help you?  Maybe, maybe not.  If you are just starting to turn gray and are what we call "salt and pepper" it might be worth a shot to look 35 rather than 45.  It could make the difference in a tie breaker situation.  However, if you are way past that gray transition period it's unlikely that dark hair will mask the other signs of aging like skin texture and wrinkles.  In this case I'd suggest not to bother.  Rather than making you look younger it may just make you look foolish.

Turn your gray from a liability into an asset

Whether you dye or not, go into that interview proud to be who you are and confident in what you bring to the job that the younger person cannot.  If you do, the gray can be seen as an asset, not a liability.  On the other hand, if you try to fool them into thinking you're younger, then you are actually telling them that age is an important selection factor and are admitting that your age makes you a less desirable candidate.  You decide.

Categories: Job Search Help, Interviewing, Age Discrimination, Strategies for Unemployed, Things You Need to Know