Age Discrimination???

@Brandon9000,

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted.

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@Brandon9000,

I'm trying to look at this clear via my view of clear.

The lapse by the sending of the certificate - big time mess re my opinion, completely bad.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

[As for her resume, I helped her with it a lot. I promise you that the English is fine. It's the same style that has gotten me jobs, and, for that matter, the same style that got my mother jobs. It looks pretty reasonable to me although I could be wrong.

I'm agreeing with Germlat, as far as perhaps needing to customize the resume, maybe not to each job, but wondering if the style is good for the type of field she's looking in.

Are you and your mother in similar lines of work? Maybe what you and/or your mother do is too different from the style that's attactive to your wife's prospective employer.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

[As for her resume, I helped her with it a lot. I promise you that the English is fine. It's the same style that has gotten me jobs, and, for that matter, the same style that got my mother jobs. It looks pretty reasonable to me although I could be wrong.

I'm agreeing with Germlat, as far as perhaps needing to customize the resume, maybe not to each job, but wondering if the style is good for the type of field she's looking in.

Are you and your mother in similar lines of work? Maybe what you and/or your mother do is too different from the style that's attactive to your wife's prospective employer.

Thanks for caring, Chai. I have been a software engineer for a long time. My mother, when she was alive, was a book publishing editor. Perhaps the resume could be customized. I think we did look online at some resumes of other people in the field when we wrote it. Maybe it could be better, although I can't believe it's the whole explanation. To me it seems a combination of a job market flooded with applicants and age discrimination. As I said, all but one of the 20-something graduates found jobs, sometimes even unadvertised jobs, and the only older graduate who found work had to canvass the whole country and finally only found part time work many states away. However, it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. I can't believe, though, that all of those other applicants had such great resumes.

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There's also working with someone who writes resumes, professionally. Don't know how much it will cost but you can shop around as it can be done online. This is your wife's ticket to interviews, and it's not being punched. Maybe a pro can at least get her past that hurdle.

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@Brandon9000,

Ok so it's most probably age indeed. That would plead for erasing any tell tale sign of age in her CV, including previous education.... a tough call though.

A question you might wish to explore is: why do these particular employers like young people? Lower salary expectations? Easier to boss around? More dynamic? Because if she gets an interview, she'll have to reassure the panel that her age is not a problem.

Also, some bosses prefer mediocre employees because they are afraid of being supplanted. If that's the case, she should appear competent, but not too ambitious perhaps?

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@Brandon9000,

Go to indeed.com and look at resumes for the same job description as your wife is looking at. You can get tons of pointers there - also tons of employers advertise there too! My daughter got an after school job through indeed.com and I look there for potential employees too.

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@Olivier5,

All you are saying is true. I've served on an interview panel, and all those considerations are relevant. Best thing is to get the interview. Downplay age or other factors on CV. And yes...if you are overly qualified, you can be disqualified. Sometimes it's better to go for more than less.

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I'm guessing the applications are reasonably ok, Brandon is discerning and has looked at all of this over and over.. Olivier may be right - xenophobia going on.

That is odd in lab work in my time in it - I have friends from Eritrea, Cameroon, Philippines, Burma (then), Lebanon - but times change and fear and distaste grow.

But my first guess is that the non deliverence of the certificate is the cause of the mess, and it might not be xenophobia at all.

On the other hand, I don't get why some place doesn't grab her. Have you tried universities?

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@jespah,

jespah wrote:

There's also working with someone who writes resumes, professionally. Don't know how much it will cost but you can shop around as it can be done online. This is your wife's ticket to interviews, and it's not being punched. Maybe a pro can at least get her past that hurdle.

Well, it can't hurt, but I doubt that all of these other people, particularly the ones in their early 20s have such great resumes. This is obviously not the primary factor. It hasn't been punched because her resume is fine. Not that it couldn't be better, anything could be, but it's perfectly fine.

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@CalamityJane,

CalamityJane wrote:

Go to indeed.com and look at resumes for the same job description as your wife is looking at. You can get tons of pointers there - also tons of employers advertise there too! My daughter got an after school job through indeed.com and I look there for potential employees too.

We did this kind of thing a bit at the very beginning, but we can look at more of them.

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@Brandon9000,

But ...is she even getting an interview? If not look at the CV.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

...On the other hand, I don't get why some place doesn't grab her. Have you tried universities?

Well, do you mean a university hospital? It has to be a place where this type of medical examination is done, and it is only done to patients. She has tried every hospital in the geographically feasible area.

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@Germlat,

Germlat wrote:

But ...is she even getting an interview? If not look at the CV.

Not one interview. In fact, the vast bulk of places never respond to her application at all. In one case, she applied for a position the moment it was posted and two months later got a form e-mail saying that the position was closed. I appreciate your desire to help, but it doesn't have to be the CV. It could be other things. No one has ever commented negatively on my resume, and hers was modeled on a combination of mine and ones that we found online in her specialty.

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@Brandon9000,

Is she getting many interviews?

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@Brandon9000,

Yes, I mean a university hospital. I worked at UCLA a long time, was an eye patient later, and am now an oldie patient at UNM, which I'll grade variously, depending on the department.

I would hope she could get in line at one of those.

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@Brandon9000,

There is a famous thing that jobs are filled from within - I'm a long time out of the field but I remember at least rumors on all that, that they posted jobs already filled because they had to post them. My grasp is that may have been true, but I never knew of that actually happening.

Our labs , the ones in our building, didn't do that, so I don't know re prevalence otherwise.

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@Brandon9000,

Understood, but let's forget about everyone else for the moment.

What about cover letters? Does she write them? What do they look like? Are they generic, or more tailored to each position she's applying for?

Whatever these other people are doing, the only way that applies is if they are taking jobs that your wife should have had, e. g. your wife applies and fellow student #1 does, too, and student #1 gets the job. But if your wife applies and no one from her class does, then whatever her classmates are or aren't doing does not matter here.

I would look at Monster, they do have some info on resume-writing tutorials.

The resume + cover letter + any ins she has (e. g. getting her application passed directly to the hiring manager, or having someone in her network, etc.) generally = interview or at least it can. So look at all of the components. Something isn't working, and it may be more than one thing that needs to be tweaked.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon...it has to be the CV. She's not even getting in the door. No interviews. Something is not coming across as right. There are many medical professionals from all over the world practicing in the U.S. I'm a foreigner as well...it took some time for me to figure it out.

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@Germlat,

But wait -- she didn't get her certificate until way later, and lost time in a not very large potential zone.

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Age Discrimination???

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