‘Obsession with youth’ driving candidates to scrub experience from résumés – leading to legal and transparency considerations for Canadian employers, say experts
A growing number of job seekers are quietly erasing years of work history, graduation dates and senior titles from their résumés, to appear younger and up their chances for an interview in the face of increasing reports of ageism in hiring.
Monster's 2026 State of Résumés Report found that 77 per cent of job seekers worry their application is filtered out before a human ever sees it.
Eddy Ng, professor of organizational behaviour and Smith professor in equity and inclusion in Business at Queen's University, explains that the trend reflects a deeper bias in how employers evaluate candidates.
"There is an obsession with youth in some of the industries that are out there, and people are aware of it," Ng says, adding that the awareness also creates a double-bind for applicants; if they include a full career history, the dates give away their age. If they trim it, the gaps can look suspicious.
Obsession with youth – and legal minefield
The term "résumé Botox" – used to describe the practice of “smoothing” a résumé to make the applicant look younger – first appeared over a decade ago but has recently been popularized due to the sudden increase in AI-related discrimination inside of an already-tough job market.
For employers wondering what to do if a new hire is older than expected, Abby Leung, an employment lawyer with Whitten & Lublin in Toronto, says Canadian human rights law draws a clear line around what is considered grounds for discipline, or more.
Candidates who engage in résumé fixing could potentially face consequences for misrepresentation, she says, but there is a big difference between concealing age-related details and lying about qualifications – basically, one is legal and one isn’t: "It's more in terms of things that are crucial for the position."
Job applicants who outright lie about certifications, specific qualifications or other required details will have a hard time claiming discrimination if they are fired, Leung explains, while those who simply omit graduation dates or trim the chronology of their work history are on much safer ground.
However, even with protections under human rights legislation, “it's very difficult for somebody to prove that their application was dismissed, entirely or in part, due to discrimination based on human rights grounds,” she says, meaning employees will face an uphill battle when they suspect bias, before or after hire.
Rethinking job postings and screening criteria
That reality does not absolve employers of responsibility, however. Leung says the best practice for employers is to build layers of protection into the hiring process, including having multiple people review applications, auditing AI outputs, and making sure that rejected candidates were excluded for legitimate, job-related reasons.
From a human resources standpoint, Ng points out that the way employers post job openings can encourage candidates to downplay or hide valuable experience, thereby disqualifying themselves from the running.
To avoid cutting out qualified talent by inadvertently broadcasting ageist ideals, he says employers need to start at the beginning by conducting proper job analyses. Employers can also explicitly signal that experienced candidates are welcome by favouring language that goes beyond the typical "five years required" to more deliberately welcoming terms, “along the lines of 'We welcome experienced workers,'” he says.
Leung notes that some companies – such as in Ontario where there are new transparency rules – are now required to disclose their use of AI in hiring, though not necessarily the specifics of how it is deployed. She recommends that employers go a step further to assuage any concerns potential candidates may have about how their applications will be screened.
"Maybe some sort of description to say that ‘We are using AI to review the applications, but we would also like to review the applications afterwards from a human perspective,’" Leung says.
"That might help to try to dissuade any sort of thoughts about discrimination."
Gen AI on résumés: innovation, not cheating
The Monster report also found that employee confidence in employer résumé reviewing is abysmally low, with only six per cent saying they believe résumés are read thoroughly. Conversely, employers are struggling to process more candidates using generative AI (genAI) tools to draft résumés and cover letters.
Ng says employers need to accept this reality as the new status quo and should view genAI use in applications as a signal of relevance and creative thinking, rather than a red flag.
What matters, he says, is whether candidates go beyond the default output; for him, that extra effort "signals conscientiousness, creativity and also intelligence."
On the employer side, Leung says AI use should be minimized and used more as a “recommendation agent,” with human employees still checking rejected applications to ensure they were cut for legitimate reasons – not only for legal protection, but to find potential applicants who don’t meet formal requirements.
She says this is why "that human judgment and that human reviewing over the applications are still very helpful, just to make sure that the applications that are being rejected are not being rejected due to any sort of errors from the AI itself."
