CV writing is the perfect opportunity to sell yourself to prospective employers by highlighting years of professional and life experience. Being slightly older, you will know your professional self pretty well, which should make identifying your strengths much easier. Our guidelines below will help you translate your positive attributes into a CV you’re proud of.
If done successfully, CV writing can give you a huge confidence boost. There’s no time like the present to show future employers why you are the right person for the job.
Before writing
Before writing your CV, you should carefully consider which job role(s) you will be applying for. This will help you decide which skills and experience you should showcase; it’s important to be as selective as possible. Over 50s typically have a wealth of experience, but it’s unnecessary to include lengthy details about work that has no relevance to the role you’re applying for. Your CV should be no longer than two pages long (a real challenge when you have over 30 years experience but no less important); employers are busy and don’t have time to read pages and pages about each candidate.
It’s helpful to read the job specification for roles you are interested in so you can identify which skills and experience match yours and ensure you highlight these in your CV. It’s quite normal to have two, or even three versions of your CV – tailored to the different types of jobs you are applying for. This enables you to highlight the strengths you have, that are most applicable to any specific job. This can be particularly helpful when you’re going for a career change, as you will have many transferable skills that could make you a valuable asset for the right company.
Include a personal statement
Start your CV with a personal statement or summary about you, the professional. This snippet will give employers a brief idea about your professional background, your career aspirations and your skills. It’s important to get this right as it’s often the first thing an employer reads, and can be the only thing! Keep this short and sweet – it should be no more than two or three sentences long. If you’re not currently employed, give a brief outline of your skills, professional background and ambitions.
Prioritise
Future employers are going to want information about your work history, starting with your current or most recent role. Include the job title, company, and a brief outline of the role – then continue listing other relevant work in chronological order. You will need to account for all of the time you have spent working, and also the time that you haven’t so an employer can build up an overall picture – but often you can group up a large number of jobs and roles you did in your 20s and 30s to save space, unless they are particularly relevant to the job you want.
When giving a brief description of each job role, keep it concise by using lots of relevant keywords/buzzwords e.g ‘accountable’, ‘driven’, ‘tactical’. This way, if an employer is searching online for someone with your skill set, they have a better chance of finding your CV. Rather than listing everything you did at a company, often it can help to think about two or three things that defined your time there – focusing on how you helped the company be successful.
Education and qualifications become less important once you’ve gained years of professional experience, and these can be placed in a separate section after your work experience). You should also include a section about your skills, hobbies and interests to showcase you as a human! Be as specific as possible and include things that will make you stand out from the crowd. This stuff really matters. If you’ve played an active role in organising a local community club or charity you might be amazed at how many transferable business skills you can demonstrate from these areas of your life.
Things to Remember
Stand out from the crowd
Employers receive hundreds of CVs and many use the same cliches, such as ‘I work hard’, ‘I work independently’ and ‘I’m proactive’. Generally speaking, most employees will say they have these qualities – it’s your unique qualities, examples and experience that will set you apart. Avoid cliches; instead tell employers what you have done that others may not. Mention specific achievements in past roles and give clear examples.
Keep it clear and professional
Your CV needs to grab future employers’ attention and huge blocks of text will be off-putting, so try using bullet points and sub-headings to make sections clear and concise. Employers will be sifting through hundreds of CVs, so the easier it is to read yours at a glance, the better.
Keep your CV classy and professional by sticking to one colour; black. Colours on screen displays and printers vary, so by using other colours in your CV, you risk making it difficult for prospective employers to read. Also avoid using backgrounds, borders or fancy fonts because this is unprofessional and distracting.
Highlight technology skills
When CV writing over 50, you should aim to reassure employers that you can work with technology, and understand its value. You should name specific software you’ve used, explain what you’ve used it for, and highlight recent or future training to show you’re a keen learner. Technology is constantly evolving and things become outdated quickly, so do your research to ensure that the skills and software you list on your CV are still relevant in modern technology.
If you don’t have LinkedIn, now is the time to set up your profile. It’s likely that an employer will search for your LinkedIn profile once they’ve received your CV, to judge the quality of your online presence in the professional world. You should include a link to your LinkedIn profile on your CV, to show employers that you are up to date with current technology trends. But, make sure that the information on your LinkedIn profile matches that on your CV.
Use the right tone of voice
Your CV should radiate confidence and energy. Use of action verbs e.g. ‘achieved’, ‘participated’, ‘accomplished’, emphasize productivity and bring your CV to life. When talking about yourself, also use first person pronoun ‘I’ to connect with future employers on a personal level.
You don’t need to include your date of birth, or dates relating to professional experience
Age is nothing but a number and when it comes to your CV, this couldn’t be more true. There is no reason to include any information that gives away your age. Give employers the chance to judge you on your skills, knowledge and experience – not on the year you were born.
Photos are unnecessary
Unless you’re applying for a modelling or acting job, what you look like is irrelevant. Photos take up valuable space and give employers additional information about you e.g. age and ethnicity, that should not be taken into account when judging the suitability of individuals.
Use a professional email address
Employers will take you more seriously if you have a suitably worded email address to put on your CV e.g. [email protected]. You should also avoid using an email address that gives away your age if you want to be judged on your skills and experience alone.
Read up on CV algorithms and how to beat them
Proofread (and again, and again)
A well written CV is one that is grammatically sound. Bad grammar and spelling mistakes suggest a lack of caring or poor attention to detail, which will discourage employers from inviting you to an interview. Read your CV at least 3 times to check for errors. If you’re still unsure, you can give it to a friend or family member to proofread with a fresh pair of eyes.
Consider using a CV building website, or our free CV template
If you’re short on time and looking for a fast-track route to creating a CV, there a number of websites that build CVs for you based on the information you give them. Your information will be inputted into a design template of your choosing. You could try out services like My Perfect CV, Live Career and CV Genius. We also have our very own CV template, which you can download and fill in for free – you can find this here.
Writing a CV is a great opportunity for personal reflection and a chance to celebrate your successes. It could be years since the last time you updated yours, and you might surprise yourself with how much you’ve accomplished since then. If you’re over 50, you’ll have experience on your side, so it’s important to show employers just how much they can benefit from your skills. A new job is an exciting new chapter in your life and by following these top tips, you can increase your chances of getting hired
And remember…
Writing a CV is a great opportunity for personal reflection and a chance to celebrate your successes. It could be years since the last time you updated yours, and you might surprise yourself with how much you’ve accomplished since then. If you’re over 50, you’ll have experience on your side, so it’s important to show employers just how much they can benefit from your skills. A new job is an exciting new chapter in your life and by following these top tips, you can increase your chances of getting hired.
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16 thoughts on “Top tips for writing a CV when you’re over 50”
Although there is a lot of very useful information here regarding CV writing for seniors, I think actually showing people HOW to do this, (ie excellent examples of your suggestions), rather than just telling them, would really improve the quality of your advice.
What would be really helpful would be to see several example CVs of your suggestions(in practice!), which readers could then model/adapt to meet their needs.
I agree with Paula, the information provided is useful and informative but readily available.
Practical examples would be very useful, also providing “action” words
to use is great but putting them into context would be a prompt candidates need t on how to summarise their own skillset.
Having to think about producing several CV alternatives also could be daunting so as much as you can see is always both practical and helpful… and something you can refer back to as a reminder .
I agree with the previous comments. After 18 years of working in Africa, I feel like an Alien apply for jobs in the U. K. A ‘how to’ advice video and general examples of good quality applications would really help.
Yvonne, Julie and Paula – thank you all for your feedback on how we might improve this article by adding examples or videos. We have been discussing how best to do that, so your comments are very helpful.
All very accurate and useful. I made the mistake of overselling myself in my cv and interviews when moving from London to rural Scotland. The language from my cv and general confidence seemed to put prospective employers off, and they didn’t want to employ someone that might have aspirations for their manager role. I did not, and wish I had made that clearer, as you suggest.
Interesting information provided by all the above. These have all been in my thoughts. I am in the same position as Yvonne As I’ve also worked in Africa and feel like an Alien. I am glad that I am not alone. Having worked at management/executive level, I feel that I have been there, done that. I’m trying to get back into the workplace but At middle management. I would be interested in some ideas on how to achieve this. I know we are in unprecedented times so it may take sometime.
I lack the confidence because English is a second language and for me though my CV looks great with all the relevant experiences , the issue is expressing myself and using the right phrases.
Totally agree with all of you, employer/web sites often ask what are your aspirations for the role you are applying
If you show previous experience, they all ask these details, then you say management skills (example) this can totally go against you, as they see this as a threat to some
Say/show eg: Retail, then it looks: what have you been doing
If you have worked all your life, all would like is a job
The advice is useful, but would be better if you included or follow up with some info on how online CV’s are actually processed i.e by by Applicant Tracking Systems or “CV Robots”. Whilst online application has made applying for a job much easier than it used to be, it does mean that employers now receive a flood of applications for each post and the only way to deal with this is to use a filtering system. This means that about 75% of CV’s submitted online are rejected before they are looked at by a human being.
I think some info on this would be useful to help those who may not understand why they may get a stream of standardised rejection emails and the tactics they could use to help get their CV noticed. I spent almost a year applying for jobs and getting rejections before this was explained to me.
Audrey, this is so helpful. Can you suggest what to put in or leave out in order to have the best chance of not being filtered out? Thank you for raising this, I had no idea.
Having worked for 40+ years. My last employer of over 10 years had no choice but to make me redundant in September due to covid epidemic. I knew this was going to happen from the end of June so set forth updating my CV. I am 62 and thought the chances of anyone wanting to employ me for the next 4 years would be pretty slim especially also due to the fact that I live rural and also so many people have been made redundant in my region we are all chasing the same jobs which are few and far between. I decided to edit my CV so I have 3 different templates. I do not put dates of birth, education and because my last job was for over 10 years I do not put any other job history. One side of A4 including 2 references details thats it. To date I have applied for around 30 positions and at least 3/4 have written back with a rejection. I appreciated the fact that at least I got a reply. This week I received another rejection and then later on that same day I received a request for interview. Which I have on Monday. To me this is a positive no matter what the outcome. Don’t give up hope. Believe in yourself. Wish me luck for Monday.
Hi B.A. thank you so much for sharing your experience with all of us here and indeed we must never give up hope! How did your interview go on Monday?
How I apply
Hi William thank you for your message. To apply for any jobs, please click on the Work tab at the top of your screen on our website, or click here https://restless.co.uk/jobs/, and run a search of jobs based on keywords and location. You can then select any of them and there will be a button that allows you to apply for the selected one. Hope that helps!
I recently applied for a job directly with the company recruiting and heard nothing so after reading your tips the next job I applied for, again direct with the company recruiting, was sent with a cover letter highlighting that my skills would easily transfer to a different industry and this time I not only received a phone call to chat, I was offered the job and started last week- thank you Rest Less team for your advice :o)
Good morning Liz, thank you so much for sharing your experience with all of us and for the excellent news. We are all very happy that we could be of help with landing your new job! Very well done indeed! It would be awesome if you could share this even more with others, on Google, here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Rest+Less/@51.5031923,-0.0941941,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x487603a5c43afa27:0x7bb34c336edee436!8m2!3d51.5031923!4d-0.0920054 – and/or Facebook, here: https://www.facebook.com/restless.co.uk/reviews, as that will incredibly help our small team to further grow and to make your Rest Less Community stronger and stronger. Thank you so much and all the very best with your new role!