Leaving Information Off Resume to Combat Age Discrimination

[groundloop]

You'd think someone with two degrees and over 20 years of experience in my field would have an easy time finding a job. Not if you're over 55. I was first laid off after over 15 years with a large company due to corporate downsizing in 2014. It took me 4 months to land another job, but that one only lasted about a year because I wouldn't go along with some unethical stuff the owner was doing. I've been out of work for nearly 6 months now, have applied to 75 jobs for which I'm well qualified, and have only a handful of interviews to show for my effort. I've had phone interviews end with "What year did you get your degrees?", which is a slightly less illegal way of asking "how old are you?".

I'm thinking I'll just make my first degree disappear, all my work shown on my resume is associated with my second degree anyway. If I pretend my first degree never happened it'll take 5 years off my age when answering the question "what year did you graduate?", plus it should reduce the perception of being overqualified. They'll figure out that I'm over 50 in a face to face interview, but at least I might get my foot in more doors. The only possible downside is that my second degree is from a small school that's not well known (first degree is from a well respected school), but on the other hand that might help with the 'overqualified' prejudice.

Thoughts?