Should you hide your graduation year on your CV?

It is one of the most googled CV questions among job seekers over 50: should I remove my graduation year? My earliest jobs? The role I held in 1998?

The short answer is: it depends and the decision is more nuanced than most advice suggests. Here is how to think through it.

Why people remove dates — and whether it works

The logic is straightforward. If a recruiter sees you graduated in 1987, they can calculate your approximate age before they have read a single line of your experience. Removing the date removes that cue.

The question is whether removing it actually helps. Research is mixed. Some recruiters report that a CV with no dates raises suspicion and prompts them to ask directly. Others say that getting the application in front of a human reviewer at all, bypassing any automated screening that might filter on age proxies is worth the trade-off.

The honest answer is that it will help in some processes and make no difference in others. It is unlikely to actively hurt you.

What Australian law says

You are under no legal obligation to include your date of birth, graduation year, or any other information that could reveal your age on a CV or application. The Age Discrimination Act 2004 and the Privacy Act 1988 together mean that employers cannot request age information that is not genuinely relevant to the role, and you are not required to provide it voluntarily.

If a recruiter or employer specifically asks for your date of birth or graduation year with no legitimate justification, that request itself may raise a discrimination concern worth noting.

A practical framework for what to include

Rather than thinking about hiding information, think about relevance. Your CV should represent the experience that is most relevant to the role you are applying for. Anything beyond 15 to 20 years ago is generally less relevant to contemporary hiring decisions, not because it lacks value, but because recent experience is what most employers weight most heavily.

This is a reasonable editorial principle that applies regardless of age. A 35-year-old with 12 years of experience does not include their high school work history either.

With that frame, a practical approach looks like:

• Include the last 15 to 20 years of roles in full detail — responsibilities, achievements, impact
• List earlier roles in a brief “Earlier career” section with employer name, title, and years only, no detailed descriptions
• Include your highest and most relevant qualifications, the institution and credential, without the year if you prefer
• Remove graduation years from all qualifications unless they are very recent or specifically relevant
• Remove roles predating the mid-2000s unless they are directly, specifically relevant to the target role

The LinkedIn question

LinkedIn presents a specific challenge because it is harder to curate. Most profiles include dates automatically, and removing them can make your profile look incomplete to recruiters using LinkedIn Recruiter search tools.

One approach: be selective about how far back your listed experience goes on LinkedIn, and treat your profile as a highlights reel rather than a complete career history. Your LinkedIn does not need to match your CV exactly, it just needs to be accurate about what it does include.

The bigger question

Optimising your CV to manage age bias treats the symptom, not the cause. The more useful long-term strategy is to target employers who have already committed to age-inclusive hiring, where your experience is an asset from the first point of contact, not something to be managed around.

That said, CV strategy is a real and practical concern for the job search you are doing right now. Remove dates if it makes you more confident in the application. Do not feel that doing so is somehow dishonest, you are simply presenting your experience in the way that gives it the best chance of being fairly assessed.

For more on CV strategy tailored to the 50+ job seeker, see our Career advice pillar — including our guide to LinkedIn for experienced professionals and how to work with a CV coach who understands the 50+ market.