By C.Kimberly Toms | May 20, 2025
For two decades, I’ve been telling a half-truth in my professional life.
On every resume, LinkedIn profile, and job application, I’ve written the same carefully crafted phrase: “over 20 years of experience in marketing communications.” It sounds impressive enough—until you realize that the actual number is 43 years.
Yes, I’ve been deliberately underreporting my professional experience by half. And I’m finally ready to talk about why.
We live in a world where experience should be currency—wisdom accumulated through decades of navigating challenges, building solutions, and learning from both successes and failures. Yet for many of us, particularly women, there comes a point where additional years of experience stop being an asset and start becoming a liability.
I first noticed the shift in my early 40s. During interviews, I could see the mental calculations happening behind interviewers’ eyes as they tried to reverse-engineer my age from my experience. “Twenty years in marketing communications” meant I must have started my career around age 22, which would make me…
The math wasn’t difficult, but I quickly learned that the conclusions drawn from it were problematic.
So I started being strategic. I mentioned only my most recent 20 years of experience. I left earlier positions off my resume. I carefully curated my professional narrative to present myself as experienced—but not too experienced.
And in a way, it worked. The mental calculations still happened in interviews, but they led to different conclusions.
Today, I’m announcing a personal experiment. I’m updating my resume, my LinkedIn profile, and my professional introduction to reflect the truth: I have over 40 years of experience in marketing communications. 43, in fact. Stop doing the math! You will assume me much older than I actually am, since I started working in “marketing” well before I was technically legal to do so.
This isn’t about pride or accuracy for its own sake. It’s about acknowledging a reality that I’ve been avoiding: by hiding my experience, I’m not just hiding my age—I’m hiding my value.
Those additional 20 years weren’t empty decades. They were foundational years where I developed skills, perspectives, and approaches that continue to inform my work today. They include lessons learned from industries and market shifts that many of today’s marketing professionals have only read about in case studies.
Why should I pretend those years never happened? More importantly, why should any employer miss out on the benefits of that experience?
My decision to unveil my full professional history isn’t just about external perceptions. It’s also about what happens after getting hired.
Over the years, I’ve found myself in multiple situations where I reported to individuals with significantly less experience—often 20+ years less. In theory, this shouldn’t be an issue. It was an issue for me, in that I welcomed a more youthful perspective to maintain applicability in my field. But in practice, it created complex dynamics I hadn’t anticipated.
When you have decades more experience than your manager but have presented yourself as having comparable experience, you create an invisible knowledge imbalance. Your ideas and approaches come from a deeper well of experience, but that depth remains hidden.
I’ve found myself in situations where my wealth of strategic insights was tapped continually for team benefit, but without the corresponding recognition or compensation. In hiding my true depth of experience to just remain in my field, I have opened myself up to being overused and even exploited once my deeper talents are discovered.
There are other problems one could experience because of this “underselling,” such as:
Let me be clear: reporting to less experienced professionals isn’t inherently problematic. Much depends upon the perspective and personality of such individuals. Some of my most valued associates have been younger colleagues with fresh perspectives. The problem arises when the experience gap is concealed, creating expectations misaligned with reality or even an opportunity for exploitation.
That said, I have worked through situations wherein exploitation became the “status quo.” It usually takes the form of being put into a position of higher-level consulting in a lower, less attractively compensated role. At its worst, underselling oneself in an interview can lead to a position of being used to fulfill a supervisor’s job requirements while they enjoy leaning too hard on the “underling.”
This experiment in transparency carries risk. I’m fully aware that by disclosing my full professional history, I may face more explicit age-based discrimination. Some doors may close before they even open. Personally, I also fear being labeled as older than I am, since I started working in my pre-teen years. No one wants to be aged as older.
But I’ve reached a point where the cost of concealment exceeds the benefit. By hiding my experience, I’m:
My hope is that somewhere, an organization exists that will see 40+ years of experience not as a warning sign of obsolescence, but as evidence of adaptability, resilience, and a wealth of applicable knowledge.
This experiment may succeed or fail. I may find that the doors that open to “20+ years of experience” slam shut at “40+ years of experience.” Or I may discover that being honest about my professional journey leads to more meaningful opportunities with organizations that truly value what long-term experience brings.
Either way, I’ll learn something valuable. And isn’t continuous learning what a career should be about, regardless of how many decades you’ve been at it?
So here I am, stepping into the light of full transparency. I have over 40 years of experience in marketing communications. I started young, learned continuously, and have navigated every major shift in the industry as an “early adopter and innovator” from the pre-digital era to today’s AI-driven landscape.
That wealth of experience isn’t something to hide—it’s something to celebrate and share. And I’m finally ready to do both.
What about you? Have you ever downplayed your experience due to concerns about age perception? I’d love to hear about your experiences! Connect on LinkedIn to discuss.