QUESTION> Graduation year for university on resume.  Yes or no?

Put it on. Your age is no real secret. Sell thru the objection.

See Dave’s blog this week about age discrimination, http://execunet.blogspot.com/2006/04/selling-experience_24.html and my comment.

Then, “pull up your Big Girl undies” and compete. No sense making an issue out of it; make a value out of it. “I’m not old; I’m experienced; You can benefit ‘cause I’m house broken and I made all my mistakes when some one else was paying for them!”.

RETORT: Need the job!

Well, I’ll quibble. SunTse always advises things like “When weak, appear strong. When strong, appear weak.” You may need the bucks. But you never need THAT job. I would suggest that there are certain moral, ethical, and personal boundaries that you should NEVER cross. The casting couch is a great example of a line that should never be crossed. I also firmly believe that the appropriate deity (i.e., Jesus; the Intelligent Designer; the Universe; the Flying Spaghetti Monster) will always provide what we need. The famous Wayne Dyer admonition applies: “you'll believe it when you see it OR you’ll see it when you believe it”. His formulation is that you visualize what you want and the Universal Soul will supply it. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Now, I don’t believe that one should sit on one’s butt and wait for the Publisher’s Clearing House Lottery van to arrive. But there is anecdotal evidence in my own life that this has some truth to the idea that “lucky breaks” occur. Funny how the harder I work at something, the more breaks go my way. So, let’s agree that you don’t need THAT particular job.

ALSO, I’d admonish you never even to think of the HR people as morons. It may be flip, but I have seen people sink their own ship with a loose lip. While there are a few “bad” people, (in my personal trek, I have met FOUR out of a grazillion.) by an large, people, while they may be: dumb as a stump, overworked, underpaid, overwhelmed by volume, completely inept, or just plain disagreeable, they are the Intelligent Designer’s creation and as such worthy of our respect. When I get totally in a knot, I ask myself things like: would you do that job, what problems can I help that person overcome, or what lesson is the Universe trying to teach me here. I get a lot of lessons in humility and patience. I need them because I’m not very humble or patient. Lessons are repeated until the student learns.

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