Staffing firm says engineers shouldn't mask their ages on resumes

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Aug. 8, 2003 -- The steep competition for jobs and growing concerns about age discrimination have been causing some job seekers to try to appear younger. According to a recent article in USA Today, candidates are removing dates and work experience from their resumes in order to look less seasoned. Some are even getting plastic surgery and coloring their graying locks.

USA Today reported that 63 percent of job seekers would leave a date off their resumes to hide their age, according to a survey by online job board HotJobs. Another reason candidates might be doctoring their resumes is the jump in number of age discrimination cases: USA Today wrote that the number of these cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hit 19,921 in 2002; this is a more than 40 percent increase from 14,141 in 1999.

EPCglobal, an international recruitment and staffing-solutions firm focused solely on the engineering and construction industries, advises job seekers to be honest. According to EPCglobal's Houston operations manager Robin Wappler, "I do believe some candidates omit dates in order not to be seen as too old or over qualified. In some situations the information they're leaving out could stop them from landing interviews and selling themselves into the client's environment."

Wappler says that in the contract engineering and construction fields, EPCglobal's areas of concentration, age is not an issue. "For contract positions within E&C, our clients typically do not care how old the job candidates are. A candidate should never lie on a resume. However, there is no problem with listing college degrees without years of graduation."

"Age should not and will not be a factor in any of our selection processes," says Richard Hoare, EPCglobal's managing director in the US. EPCglobal is only interested in matching a candidate's skills, experiences, qualifications and preferences to job requisitions. The company's state-of-the-art online application, EPCjobs.com, sets itself apart from mere job boards by providing a platform for completing the entire hiring process with industry-focused matching technology. Using an easy web-interface system, job candidates create their own profiles using industry-specific terms, and can attach their resumes for consideration.

This simplifies the application process for the users, allowing them to choose from very detailed experience-descriptor lists. It also gives a much more accurate picture of their background than the general terminology that's frequently used on most job-search websites. The EPCjobs application then uses research-driven logic to compare and rank the results. This leads to the most efficient and accurate ranking/matching of a job-seeker's profile to open positions.

EPCglobal provides full-service recruiting and staffing solutions to the international engineering and construction (E&C) industries, with more than 1,400 professionals currently on assignment around the world.

EPCglobal is powered by EPCjobs.com, the engineering-specific online staffing solution, developed for the engineering industry.

For more in-depth information about EPCglobal, click the link below:

http://www.epcglobal.com/webtier/html/about_us_overview.htm

Companies interested in working with EPCglobal should register their information on the "Request Info" page on www.epcglobal.com by clicking http://www.epcglobal.com/webtier/html/request_info.htm or e-mailing marketing@epcglobal.com.

Job seekers should register on www.epcjobs.com.