You can explain what the law says, describe how the complaint process works, and point her to the agencies that publish the rules. What you cannot do is tell her whether her situation is unlawful, advise her on filing strategy, or interpret how a statute applies to her facts. That line is the difference between education and the unauthorized practice of law, and it is a line coaches cross casually and often.
In practice most of the age questions that come up in relaunch coaching are not litigation questions at all. They are resume questions: should she remove graduation dates, should she cut the roles from the nineties, how does she answer when an interviewer asks how long she plans to keep working. Those you can handle, provided you keep the advice factual rather than strategic about a legal claim.
Here is the working knowledge to have, and the script for the moment a client says she thinks she was rejected because of her age.
What the ADEA actually covers, and the forty and over threshold
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act is the federal statute. It protects workers who are forty and older from discrimination in hiring, firing, pay, promotion, layoffs, training, benefits and job assignments.
Three features matter for a returner.
- The floor is forty. There is no federal protection below it, and the statute does not protect a younger worker who claims she lost out to an older one.
- Employer size. The ADEA applies to private employers with twenty or more employees, along with federal, state and local government and employment agencies and labor organizations. A ten person company is outside federal age coverage, though a state law may still reach it.
- It covers applicants, not only employees. A returner who never got hired is within scope.
Related statutes come up in the same conversations. The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act governs waivers of age claims in severance agreements, including the consideration and revocation periods a departing worker gets. If a client is holding a severance document, that is an attorney conversation, immediately.
Keep reading: Is an ICF credential or a resume writing certification worth more to my practice?
State laws that go further than federal, and why your client's location matters
Federal law is a floor. Many states protect against age discrimination at smaller employer headcounts than twenty, some cover a broader age range, and some provide different remedies or longer filing windows. New York City and several other municipalities add their own human rights ordinances on top.
Because this varies by jurisdiction and changes, do not carry a memorized list. Carry a method.
- Establish where the work is performed, which may not be where she lives if the role is remote.
- Identify the state civil rights or fair employment agency for that state, often called a Fair Employment Practices Agency.
- Send her to that agency's own published guidance, and to the EEOC's site for the federal rules.
- Note the employer's approximate size, since coverage often turns on it.
- Stop there and refer if she wants to know which law applies to her facts.
Steps one, two and four are perfectly good coaching. Step five is where you hand off.
What employers may and may not ask in an application or interview
The common misunderstanding is that asking about age is itself illegal. Federally, it generally is not automatically unlawful to ask. What is unlawful is using age to make the decision. Because such questions invite exactly that inference, the EEOC has long treated them as closely scrutinized, and many employers ban them outright. Some state and local rules go further and restrict specific inquiries.
What a client should expect to see, and what it means:
| Question or field | How to read it |
|---|---|
| Date of birth on an application | Legitimate only for a narrow set of reasons. Frequently restricted by state law. Often a red flag about the employer's hiring hygiene. |
| Graduation year, required field | Common in applicant tracking systems. Effectively reveals age. Rarely required for the job itself. |
| Voluntary self identification section | Separate from the hiring file, used for reporting. She may decline. |
| "Are you over 18?" | Standard and lawful. It relates to minimum working age, not to the protected class. |
| "How long do you plan to work before retiring?" | Improper in substance. This is the one to rehearse an answer for. |
| "Are you comfortable reporting to a younger manager?" | Age framed and worth noting in her records after the interview. |
Coach the response, not the grievance. For the retirement question, a calm, forward looking answer works: that she is building the next decade of her career and is looking for a role she can grow in. She can decide afterward what the question told her about the employer.
Keep reading: Why do my returning clients stall after the resume rewrite, and how do I stop it?
Graduation dates and early career roles: advising on a resume without coaching deception
Omission is not deception. There is no legal duty to list a graduation year, and there is no requirement to list every job you have ever held. A resume is a marketing document, not a sworn statement.
What is deception, and what you must never coach: changing a graduation year, altering employment dates, inventing a credential, or misstating a degree. Beyond the ethics, employment applications are usually signed under an accuracy attestation, and background checks verify degrees and dates. A falsified date is grounds for withdrawal of an offer or termination later, at which point your client has traded an age concern for a cause termination.
The defensible practice:
- Drop graduation years from the education section. Keep the institution and the degree.
- Show roughly the last fifteen years in full detail with dates.
- Group anything older under a short "Earlier experience" heading listing employer and title without dates, if it is relevant at all.
- Name the career break with accurate dates rather than leaving an unexplained hole.
- Fill required date fields in an application system truthfully. Those forms are attested; the resume is not.
That last distinction is the one clients need spelled out. Leaving something off a resume is a choice. Entering a false date in an application is a misrepresentation.
The EEOC charge process and the deadline your client cannot miss
Under federal law a private sector worker generally must file a charge with the EEOC before she can bring an ADEA lawsuit, and there is a filing deadline measured from the discriminatory act.
The federal deadline is commonly 180 calendar days from the act, extended to 300 days in states that have their own age discrimination law and enforcement agency. Federal employees follow a different and much shorter process that begins with contacting an EEO counselor at their own agency, with a deadline counted in days, not months.
Because which deadline applies depends on jurisdiction and facts, give the client exactly one instruction: treat the clock as short, count from the date of the act, and speak to the EEOC or an employment attorney now rather than after researching. The single most damaging thing a coach can do here is reassure a client that she has plenty of time.
What she should be doing meanwhile is preserving records, and that is squarely within your scope. Save the job posting, the application confirmation, correspondence, interviewer names and dates, and a contemporaneous note of what was said. Contemporaneous notes are far more useful than a reconstruction three months later.
See how RelaunchDesk handles this for career return and relaunch coaching
Where coaching stops and referral to an employment attorney starts
Use a bright line rule rather than judgment in the moment.
Refer out immediately when the client: has been handed a severance or separation agreement, asks whether she has a case, asks whether she should file, is inside or near a filing deadline, has received a right to sue notice, is currently employed and considering an internal complaint, or is facing retaliation after raising a concern.
Stay in scope when the client: wants to understand what the ADEA covers in general, wants to practice answering an age framed interview question, is deciding what to include on her resume, wants help documenting an incident factually, or wants to know which agency publishes the rules.
Build the referral before you need it. Identify two or three employment attorneys in your client's state who represent employees rather than employers, and confirm whether they offer consultations. Many state bar associations run a lawyer referral service, and legal aid organizations cover clients who cannot pay. Handing over a name is a service. Handing over an opinion is a liability.
Documenting your own scope in the client agreement
Your agreement should say, in plain language, that you are a career coach, that you do not provide legal advice, and that nothing in the engagement creates an attorney client relationship. Add that the client is encouraged to consult a licensed attorney about any employment law question, and that you may provide publicly available government resources for information only.
Then behave consistently with it. Note in your session record when you referred out and what you provided. Keep client notes factual. If you would be uncomfortable with a client reading a note aloud, rewrite it.
Have a lawyer in your own state review the agreement once. It is a modest one time cost against a scope that touches hiring law every week.
Putting it into your practice
The workable posture is narrow and confident: explain the framework, rehearse the answers, document the facts, refer the legal question. Clients do not lose faith in a coach who says this needs an attorney. They lose faith in one who guessed.
RelaunchDesk helps on the documentation side, keeping interview logs, application records and session notes in one place with dates attached, so when a client does need to hand something to an attorney, the record already exists.
