57 Years Old and Beginning Again | Your Resume Never Reaches a Human — Here's Why

The job market has changed, and if you're over 50, the systems screening your application can detect your age before a human ever reads your name.

In this episode, Max goes deeper than yesterday's video and shares the full story: losing his job at 57, how it compares to being made redundant in 2013, and why the old playbook no longer works. He breaks down exactly how Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) filter out older applicants; from double-spacing after periods to outdated email addresses and what you can do to get past the gatekeeper and in front of a real person.

Topics covered:
Starting over at 57: the financial and emotional reality
- 2013 vs 2026: what's changed in the job market. How ATS systems like Workday, Taleo, and Greenhouse screen you out. The hidden age markers in your resume you don't know about. Why getting to the interview is the real strategy. Using your network and LinkedIn to bypass the algorithm.  What Max is building with the Empower Over 50 community

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00:00 — Introduction

01:30 — The Reality: Starting Over at 57

04:30 — 2013 vs Now: What's Changed

08:30 — The ATS Problem: How They Detect Your Age

10:30 — The Strategy: Getting Past the Gatekeeper

12:00 — What I'm Building & Community

13:30 — Outro

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Life begins when you're over fifty. You'll buy your banner strong money. Brand new story. I'm shining your golden glory. The world is yours to say. No limits now, Mr. 50 hours. This is your triumph an hour.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Hey there, welcome back to Empower Over 50. If you watch the video I put out yesterday, 57 years old and beginning again, you got the overview. You got the headline version. But I promise you that this podcast will go deeper, and that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Because here's the thing, recording a five minute video and saying, I'm starting over is one thing. Sitting there or here and actually talking through what that means, the details, the feelings, the stuff that keeps you up at night, that's something else entirely. So let's get into it. Let me just say it plainly. I lost my job. And at fifty-seven, that sentence carries a weight that it didn't carry at 37 or even forty-seven. Because at fifty-seven, you know things. You know how long it takes to find work. You know what the market looks like for people of our age, and you know the clock is ticking in a way it wasn't before. My savings are down. I'm not gonna sit here and give you the exact numbers, but I'll be honest with you. The runway is a is not infinite. I had a plan, I had a cushion, and then I had a tax bill come along and took a real chunk out of it. That's life. You plan for one thing and reality hands you something different. I haven't really talked about this with anyone. My partner knows. She's been incredible, but outside of that I've been doing what I think a lot of people in our position do. Going quiet, keeping it to myself, trying to figure it out alone, well, unless you happen to be a YouTuber. And I've realized that's a mistake. That's actually one of the reasons I'm doing this podcast, this channel, all of it. Because the isolation makes everything harder. The job search is harder, the financial stress is harder. The weight of it, the mental weight, it's heavier when you carry it alone. So this is me, not carrying it alone anymore, and if you're in a similar spot, I hope you'll consider doing the same. Now, this is not the first time I've been here. In 2013 I was made redundant. My employer at the time was bought out, and that when there was a mass layoff. A lot of people lost their jobs that day, not just me. But that doesn't make you feel any less personal when it happens. After that, I picked up a contract job, three months, and I'll be honest, I was hoping, really hoping, it would turn into something permanent. But while I was there, working in the office every day, I could see they weren't that busy. The work wasn't there to justify keeping me on. When the three months were up, that was it. So I took some time, the World Cup was on, football for those in the in the United States, and I gave myself a month just to breathe, watch the matches, clear my head, and honestly, the month was important, I needed it. When you've just been told your job doesn't exist anymore, the instinct is to panic and start firing off applications immediately. But sometimes you need a beat, you need to process it before you can move forward properly. And then on a Monday morning, just after the World Cup finished actually, and no England didn't win. Actually the last time the one was back in 1966 before I was born. Hey, hey, there's always this year. Anyway, I remember that day clearly. I sat down, opened LinkedIn and reached out to a few people I knew. People I'd worked with before, people who knew what I was capable of. I wasn't applying to job postings, I was having conversations. And by Thursday, four days later, I had a job. Now I'm telling you that story for a reason. Because that approach, reaching out to your network, connecting with people who already know your work, that still works. LinkedIn is still powerful for that. If you can get a referral, if you can get someone to put your name forward, you bypass a lot of the nonsense I'm about to talk about. But here's what's changed since 2013. Back then, when you applied for a job, a human being would read your application. Maybe not always carefully, but someone saw your name, someone glanced at your cover letter, you could walk into a building, shake a hand, look someone in the eye and make an impression. That world is largely gone. Today, before any human sees your application, it goes through a system, an algorithm, a piece of software that decides whether you're worth looking at. And if it decides you're not, nobody ever knows you applied. These systems are called applicant tracking systems. You might have heard the term. Companies like Workday, Talio, Greenhouse, these are the platforms that run the gate. And most large companies use them. We're talking about the majority of job applications you submit online go through one of these systems before a recruiter ever sees them. Here's how it works. You upload your CV, or resume, you fill in the fields, you write your cover letter, then the ATS scans everything. It's looking for keywords, it's checking your formatting, it's scoring you against the job description. And if your score isn't high enough, you filtered out, silently. No rejection email, no explanation, just nothing. You apply and you never hear back. Sound familiar? Now here's the part that really got to me when I started digging into this. These systems can estimate your age even if you never put your date of birth on your CV or resume. Even if you've removed your graduation year, which most of us have learned to do by now, they pick up on things you would never think of. Here's one that's stopping me in my tracks. Double spacing after a period. If you learn to type on a typewriter, and if you're over 50 and there's a good chance you did, you were taught to put two spaces after a full stop. It's muscle memory. You've been doing it for 40 years without thinking about it. An ATS can detect that, and it doesn't flag it as a typo, it flags it as a signal, a signal that you learned to type before the 1990s, and by extension, a signal of how old you are. Think about that for a moment. A habit so automatic you don't even know you're doing it. And it's being used to build a profile of when you entered the workforce. And it doesn't stop there. Using our Yahoo on AOL email address. And let's be honest, a lot of us still have one. Referencing software that's been discontinued for a decade. Using job titles that have been renamed three times since you held them. Listing experience going back to the 1990s when the job only asked for 10 years. Putting references available upon request at the bottom. That's another one. Nobody does that anymore. But if you learn to write a CV in the 80s or 90s, it was standard. Each one individually means nothing, but together they paint a picture, and the picture says this person is older. Now, are these systems designed to discriminate? No, they're designed to filter efficiently, to narrow down hundreds or thousands of applications into a manageable pile. But when the criteria they use to filter, formatting habits, technology references, employment history patterns correlate with age, the result is the same. You get screened out quietly before anyone ever reads your name. If you've been applying for jobs and hearing nothing back, this might be why. Not because you're not qualified, but because the system never let anyone see that you are. So, what do you do about it? Well, here's what I've learned, and this is the core of what I want to share with this community. The goal, the real goal, is to get a human being. That's it. Everything else is just getting past the gatekeeper. Because here's what I know to be true. If you can get into a room with someone, a video call, a phone screen, an in-person interview, you have a shot. At our age, we have experience, we have stories, we have decades of problem solving that no 28-year-old can match. The challenge isn't selling ourselves to people, the challenge is getting that chance to do it. So, step one is understanding what these symptoms are looking for and making sure your application doesn't get thrown out before it reaches a person. That means formatting your CV correctly, using the right keywords, and I mean the exact phrases from the job description. Removing the little age markers I just talked about, single spaces after periods, a modern email address, current terminology for your skills. This isn't about lying, it's not about pretending to be something you're not. It's about presenting your real experience, your real career in a format that systems recognise and scores favorably. Same person, same skills. Just translate it into the language the gatekeeper understands. Now, step two. Never underestimate your network. What worked for me in 2013 still works now. LinkedIn is still one of the most powerful tools you have. Reach out to people you've worked with. Let them know you're looking. A referral can skip the ATS entirely in many cases. It's always better to find work through someone you know than to submit into the void. Now I want to be open about something. I'm not just talking about this, I'm living it right now in real time. I'm going through the job search myself. Right now, this week. I'm testing these strategies, I'm reformatting my CV. I'm learning what these systems look out for, and I'm adjusting accordingly. I'm figuring out what works and what doesn't. Here's my commitment to you. Everything I learn I'm going to share with you openly. The wins and the failures, the approaches that get responses, and the ones that disappear into the void. Because there's no point in me figuring all of this out just for myself. I want to put together something on the website, a section where you can access the processes and tools I'm using. Not behind a paywall, not a course. Just practical, useful information that anyone in this community can use. Because if the system is set up against us, the least we can do is share the playbook with each other. The Empower Over 50 community is already growing. It's a place where people in the same boat can talk to each other, share what they know, ask questions and not feel like they're doing this all alone. Because you're not. I'm 57 and I'm doing it too, and I'd rather do it alongside people who understand and pretend everything is fine. If you want to be a part, the link is in the show notes. No sales pitch, no subscription fees, just people helping each other. So that's the full picture. Or at least that's where I am right now. The video gave you the overview. This gives you the detail. I'm 57 years old, I'm starting over. My savings are going in the wrong direction, and the job market has changed in ways I didn't fully understand until I started looking into it. But I'm not going quiet this time, I'm sharing everything. The strategy, the setbacks, the small wins. If this resonated with you, do me a favour, share with someone who might need to hear it. Subscribe if you haven't already, and come join us in the community because this is better when we do it together. I'm Max Farnan. This is Empire Over 50, and I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for listening. Cheers.