If you’ve done any job-hunting since 2020, you’ve probably experienced this scenario: You apply for a job for which you’re clearly qualified, and before you’ve even recorded the job app on your spreadsheet, a rejection arrives in minutes. Trust me. A human didn’t read your resume — a software platform did. And it decided (rightly or wrongly) that you weren’t worth a second look.
You’re not being paranoid. It’s been documented and litigated, but you can make a few changes to your resume to increase the odds that a human will see and evaluate your resume.
Read:Most older workers have seen or experienced job discrimination
Has AI been found to discriminate against older workers?
Unfortunately, yes. And courts and regulators have acted on this discrimination for several years. For example, in 2022, over 200 applicants filed an EEOC case against iTutorGroup, a tutoring company whose AI-powered hiring software was allegedly programmed to automatically reject women over 55 and men over 60. The company settled, paying $365,000 to the plaintiffs.
Another, currently ongoing case is Mobley v. Workday. Derek Mobley, an IT professional over 40, applied to more than 100 jobs through companies using Workday’s AI screening tools. Every single application was rejected, sometimes within the hour. His lawsuit alleges that Workday’s tool used data points such as employment-history interruptions and medical leave — both correlated with age — in ways that violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
In July 2024, a federal judge allowed the case to proceed, saying that Workday could be treated as an agent of the employers using it (rather than a neutral tool). In May 2025, the court certified it as a nationwide collective action under the ADEA, opening the door for anyone 40+ who applied through Workday since September 2020 to join. That opt-in window closed in March 2026, but the case is ongoing. The outcome could shape how all AI hiring vendors are held accountable in the future.
Why would an AI system discriminate by age?
This discrimination rarely happens on purpose, which is why it’s hard to spot and harder to fight. Most hiring AI doesn’t ask for your age directly. It looks for patterns that correlate with age instead:
- Graduation dates
- Years at job
- Gaps in employment history
- Specific software skills listed on a resume
An algorithm trained mostly on younger, recently-hired employees can learn that longer job gaps or graduation dates 20+ years in the past are red flags, without anyone explicitly telling it to discriminate by age. A 2026 Stanford study of a different hiring algorithm focused on race, but useful to include here, found systemic rejection. Some candidates were rejected from every job they applied to, at rates far higher than if employers had decided independently.
Researchers traced this trend to algorithmic nomenclature — when hundreds of employers use tools from the same vendors, one biased pattern can shut a person out everywhere at once. If a system learns to penalize anything correlated with being an older applicant, the bias doesn’t stay contained to one rejection. It follows you.
What are your legal protections now?
You’ve got more protections than you may realize, and they’re expanding state by state.
Federally, the ADEA already protects applicants 40+ from age discrimination, whether a person or computer made that decision. Courts have been clear that a facially neutral process (one that never mentions age) can still be illegal if it disproportionately affects older applicants even without the intent to discriminate.
Here are a few specific state protections worth knowing if you’re job hunting now:
- New York City Local Law 144 requires employers who use automated employment decision tools to have them independently bias-audited within a year of using them to screen candidates.
- Starting on January 1, 2026, Illinois requires employers to notify applicants when they use AI in hiring decisions.
- California has rules taking effect in 2027 that give applicants the right to opt out of automated decision-making for hiring and to see how the tool works.
If you live in one of these states, you may already have a right to ask, in writing, whether AI screened you and to request a human review.
How to beat AI hiring tools as an older job seeker
You can’t completely outthink a system you can’t see, but you do have options. As a professional resume writer (among my other jobs), I typically recommend my clients do the following:
- Do include a one-line explanation for job gaps (caregiving leave, 2021-2022), giving the system data instead of an unexplained blank that it could interpret negatively.
- Match the language of the job posting, as many tools rank resumes by keyword overlap more than by judgment of your ability. If the listing says “stakeholder management” and your resume says “client relationships,” tweak your wording. You’re translating real experience into the words the system is scanning for.
- Drop graduation years and decades-old dates, as removing them eliminates the more obvious age-correlated data points. List your degree(s) and skip the year(s).
- Lead with relevant, recent experience rather than providing a full career chronology. Ideally, provide specifics for the last 10-15 years and summarize or list the rest as career notes — without dates.
- Ask if the potential employer uses AI as part of its hiring process. It’s a fair question for a recruiter or cover letter, and depending on your state, you have a legal right to know.
- Document everything if something feels off. Rapid, repeated rejections across employers using the same platform are worth noting — jot down the dates, platform(s) and outcome(s), in case it matters later.
What should you do now?
If you’re in the market for a new job, know that while the legal fight over AI hiring discrimination continues, you don’t have to wait for a final ruling to protect yourself. The ADEA still applies to you regardless of who (or what) is conducting the screening.
See whether your state gives you a legal right to ask questions that these systems used to allow employers to avoid answering. And optimize your resume to get past those electronic guardians at the gate, to ensure that it’s evaluating your qualifications.