I have applied for two roles recently where I was rejected prior to interview for being "too senior".In one case the agent said I had more experience than they were looking for and there would be concern I would leave soon as something better came along. In the other case they just said I was the level above this role.All very well but I have not been working for several months. The salaries are acceptable to me and not far off what I was getting in my last job.Should I try to reduce my achievements? Perhaps lower the grades on my degrees? Or make it look like I actually had less responsibility than I did?Or is this just an age thing? Once I hit 40 my business skills all evaporated?Has anyone had any success in challenging an agent or employer on this and convincing them to change their minds?

Why are you not tailoring your CV to meet the jobs you are applying for?

Ht: I am guessing your CV is 6 pages long. Distil it down to 2 pages - and I don't mean 'cram it into 2 pages'. I mean pick out the relevant stuff, and distil the rest with something like "...and 10 years of experience in senior positions in ...".If I read a 6-page CV covering a huge variety of roles (i.e. loads and loads of experience) and therefore struggle to grasp your USP/specialism/or the 'what you are about', then an easy response I could give is "too senior" or "over qualified". Might also explain the other response you got. Just a guess since I haven't read your CV. Let me know if this might apply to you.

It is 2 pages and tailored for each role with a summary of all the relevant experience relating to the role.On the surface it is a good CV. However I probably do fall your "wide variety of roles" bucket. I recognise this is definitely not a good place to be in the current job market. However this is the main reason I am looking at slightly less senior roles which are more specialist.Given that I have the background that what would make this look attractive to you?

The usual tricks to mask age, if you haven't already used them, can be employed. No point going overboard as it looks like you've something to hide, but there's no need to include your birthdate on your CV, dates for your educational qualifications, or every single role you've held (i.e. you can drop your first few jobs to shed visible years).You mention lowering the grades on your degrees - to be honest, if you're going into this level of detail at your age, it suggests you may have a lot of other extraneous information on your CV which does not support your application but can be used to knock it out of contention.Having minimised age-related and other extraneous influences on the recruiter, make sure that the language you use matches the requirements of the job. We all get used to slightly "puffing up" our levels of responsibility and achievement on our CVs, but you may actually need to "deflate" if you're applying for roles which require more hands-on delivery experience. For example, if your CV says you "led" a project, you can change it to say you "managed" the project and focus on your role within the team, rather than the team as a separate reporting unit.The other thing you could do, contrary to typical career advice, is to put your salary expectations on your application. The recruiters may simply be assuming based on your experience that you'd be too expensive. If they realise how "affordable" you are, they may pounce on you.