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Comment by webwanderings | Hacker News Reader

> if you had a Server 2000 MCSE on your CV right now,

Why? It would show strength and background of your past and history.

It shows you haven't done anything worthwhile for 14 years(!). If you have to pad your CV out with stuff you know won't be relevant, then you're in a weak position professionally (or are just too lazy to update your CV, which might be worse).

A lot of older employees (late 40s or 50s) make this mistake. They leave experience on their CV which is not relevant because it is twenty or more years old, and then wonder why they struggle to find work.

Look, someone somewhere might legitimately want an SCO Unix expert or something to migrate them from Netware or NT 4.0 but in those rare cases customise your CV to put that experience back on, rather than making it the default for a lot of businesses that just don't care.

I'm in my 40s and been on disability since 2003. My skills are out of date, and I've been out of work for far too long.

Been trying to learn the new technology, but knowing the old technology makes learning the new technology easier.

I haven't updated my resume in a long time, been meaning to do so. Still list Novell Netware, Commodore Amiga, COBOL, Wordperfect, Visual BASIC 6.0 etc and never updated the resume since 2001 or so. But I never handed out my resume because I've been disabled. Time to trim off the old stuff and add on my new experiences.

"Server 2000,2003,2007,2013 MCSE" or such, would show continuous strength.

Yes, but that is different than the argument that was made.

Actually that is spot on. The problem of the line is that it shows something positive ( got a cert 14 years ago ), but also something negative ( there have been 4 generations of servers in the meanwhile, where are the cert )

Obviously that is easy to explain in an interview, the problem is getting the interview in the first place. Resume are not analysed, they are scanned by irrational human, sensible to effect similar to https://xkcd.com/641/

Better make sure you get those years right if that's your padding :)

I know how to use a rotary dial phone too, but I'm not putting that on my resume. Some stuff just goes out of style....like Windows Server 2000.

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