Question

You have one the best websites devoted to the job search and career development. I have spent over 25 years in Human Resources working for Fortune 100 companies. One of the many “dirty little secrets” in larger corporations is the pervasiveness of age discrimination. Most people in corporations know it exists but won’t acknowledge it publicly. Do you have any useful ideas for how the older candidate can solve for this?

Nick’s Reply

Thanks for your kind words and for your HR insider’s confirmation of something we all know. In many companies, discrimination against older job candidates is an unwritten policy.

Age discrimination: 3 options

As I’ve suggested before, a person has choices. You can take them to court and sue if you can afford it. But most can’t.

You can walk away and forget about it, which is what most job seekers seem to do. But that doesn’t solve anything.

My recommendation is a sort of Zen approach. Don’t fight the mountain. Go around it.

age discriminationWhile some employers are just so biased against older workers that it’s not worth even acknowledging them, some are passively discriminatory. That is, they do it because it’s become habit — but their attitude can be altered. How? By forcing them to focus on how you will help make them more successful and more profitable. That’s a tall order. I’ll give you an example.

Age discrimination: A grey matter

When a Fortune 50 company downsized, they hired me to coach some employees on how to find new jobs. One of these people was 58 years old. He was tired of the age discrimination he faced. He tried dyeing his hair darker. He left dates off his resume and omitted his oldest jobs to hide his age. But he kept getting rejected. John was getting ready to go to divinity school to become a priest.

Here’s what I taught him to do. First, no more games with hair and resumes. No resumes at all. I helped him identify managers in companies he wanted to work for, and showed him how to contact them to discuss the problems and challenges they were facing — but not to inquire about jobs. This yielded some meetings to discuss jobs. (It’s amazing how managers hate to be asked about jobs, but when they get to know you a bit, they want to interview you. That’s why I call this a Zen approach!)

Seeing green

At the meetings, John didn’t wait to be asked about his skills or abilities. I showed him how to map out three challenges the manager was facing, and how to outline three things he could do to help. He presented this as a “mini business plan” for doing the job. He took the initiative to show the manager how his skills and abilities mapped directly to the requirements of the job. The interview turned into a working meeting any boss and employee might have.

The next time I saw him, John was beaming. He had a good job offer.

“I did what you said. Before the interviewer had a chance to process my grey hair, I had him in a discussion about how we could make his operation more efficient and get the job done with less overhead cost. Suddenly he was interested in the ‘green,’ rather than the ‘grey’ on my head!”

(For more about this approach, check a brief audio presentation from a workshop I did for Cornell University business students: “Don’t Get Hired, Get Acquired.”)

Show the manager the money

There’s no magic to this. It requires picking target companies carefully and doing a lot of preparation. You must be ready to discuss the manager’s problems and to suggest ways to deal with them. Age discrimination is indeed pervasive, but most managers are concerned first about their business success. Whether you’re an employee or a job applicant, it’s up to you to focus the manager on how you’ll do the work and how you can help. Show the manager the money.

Does this sound like a method of distracting the manager from any latent bias against a candidate’s age? It is exactly that. But it’s legit because you’ve guided the manager toward mutual success.

Unless the manager is a true age bigot, you’ll win them over with your plan for doing the job. Great hires are hard to come by. Prove you’re one of them, and age — like any other factor unrelated to performance — becomes less of an issue. Or, you can go back to choice number one and sue.

Have you encountered age discrimination yet? It’s so pervasive that if you haven’t, you will. What can you do about it? We discussed 3 options. There are certainly more. How do we help employers get past “the grey” for their own good?

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19 Comments
  1. It isn’t the managers who are discriminating, it is HR.

    Many times, I have heard “Let me just run it thru HR”, and that is the last I hear from them. It isn’t just that people don’t want to hire oldsters, it is a hard policy.

    • Agree. HMs are terrified of HR and losing their own jobs as well, especially if the company is downsizing. HR is also seeded with DEI types who lose your information if you don’t check the DEI and ESG boxes. Funny how older and experienced candidates aren’t diverse.

      • So, you’re saying you’re unqualified and you need handholding and special treatment to get the job? If you really are the best candidate and can’t make the HM see it, that’s on you. If the company prefers to hire someone else based on a policy you don’t like, why would you want to work there in the first place? Go find a place where they all wear MAGA hats and hooked crosses, you’ll be much happier.

        • “When you’re used to supremacy, equality feels like oppression.”

          • Oh,another case of seeing Orange Man everywhere. This is a serious discussion. If you’re going to toss around insults, go elsewhere.

  2. I started to notice that I wasn’t getting the chance to interview for jobs a few years ago. When I was younger, I could get easily secure five interviews to the one interview I might get in my later years. Part of that is economics I’m sure, we don’t live in the same world we did when I was in my 20s and 30s. Part of it is assumption, whether we as candidates state it or not, that the starting salary the company is hoping to offer is going to be much lower than our last compensation and the company is not willing to offer what we used to earn. Anyway, lots of reasons for ageism in hiring, and hard to prove even if we’re sure that’s what’s happening. I am now 72 and unfortunately in the job market again, however, I now take a more laissez faire attitude. If I can secure the interview, I show up being the best ‘me’ I can be. Part of that me is maturity, confidence, good social skills and humility. If my talents don’t match the job requirement, at least I’m not disqualified on other points. And frankly, if I suspect they are not hiring me based on my age alone, I don’t want to work for them.

    • The problem is HR terror and in investor dependent and public companies, DEI and ESG goals. Thus corporate culture of young, cheap, and “diverse” is enforced. And anyone who believes that the demographic questions are not viewed, I have a bridge to sell you.

      • Agree the source is HR terror, managers are terrified of crossing HR because they know it marks them for the next RIF. But disagree on DEI. There is some of that, but it is mostly HR keeping the salary structure down. Older, more veteran workers know their value. HR needs to keep the salary structure down (Except theirs, or course), and care more about that then qualifications or experience. Hiring managers can prefer a candidate, but HR has veto power. Always.

        Most big companies are now run by HR, as far as hiring, discipline and structure. Management has abdicated their roe and responsibilities.

        • Hi Brian, your comment is chilling. And don’t you think HR knows this? Except that their enabler–or nemesis–is the CFO, and now that CFO is coming for then. HR people are getting dropped right and left if you look at LinkedIn. And they are pissed! The reason why American and Western business doesn’t work right is that they don’t TCB–and deference to what used to be personnel is only one sign.

          Nick’s focus on the HM is great for closing…but he tends to discount HR in scuppering good hires.

          • @DeeC: I acknowledge HR’s power to scupper hires in many companies. But that’s part of the “interview the company” approach. No sour grapes, but if HR has that power, it’s time to end the interviews and move on. Or if you take the job, know that you’re probably stepping into a quagmire.

            • Nick, it’s become a chase against diminishing returns. Over time in the very same early to mid-sized health tech companies I’ve worked in since 2006, HR’s stranglehold has grown exponentially. These companies operate on investor money, and the investors want to see DEI because that controls their ability to get money in their funds. (VC founders and heads can act like pigs, but they don’t want their funds to show that.)

              Yes, it’s nice to say that one should walk away when HR has that power, but when you see this again and again, no exceptions even in the smallest of companies HQ’d offshore….it’s a brick wall.

  3. I lost my very nice job circa 2010CE. I did some survival jobs until I was able to retire at “full” benefits. The final job went six years. I noticed a few things in those years.

    The “oldsters” had developed superpowers.

    Superpower number one: showing up. (Larger percentage won the attendance awards; lower percentage was terminated for attendance issues.)

    Superpower number two: showing up on time. (same percentages)

    Superpower number three: hanging around until what needed to be done was done. (similar percentages)

    Esoteric superpowers too numerous to list.

    I always considered “oldsters” corporate gold hiding in plain sight. Corporate doesn’t even have to dig for it. All they have to do is pick up the phone and call. Our numbers are still listed.

    (Did I mention our tenures were longer than other age groups? We not only hang around, we stick around.)

    • I will add to this the capacity to not only learn but also roll with the punches and stay cool in a crisis. We may want less in comp than before in return for some flexibility…and in fact many of us don’t need your health insurance anymore so we are really a bargain.

      And despite all this, there is this resentment and desire to zero us out. Is there any better confirmation of the dysfunction and built in fear of American business?

    • @Lighthouse: Unfortunately, super powers fail against a company’s goal to cut costs. Then, eventually, the company fails. Check out my old buddy Scott Kane’s website http://www.grayhairmanagement.com

  4. I never wanted to retire. I was in a highly specialized field with 30+ years experience. That didn’t matter to large organizations. I finally secured a position with SEE (Senior Environmental Employment . A federally mandated and funded by the US Government) It ws a programs started by President Reagan). I was assigned to the EPA. I started under the first Obama Presidency. I was stunned by the direction the Federal Government was taking. The Government that had passed laws outlawing so called “Age Discrimination” was the leading practitioner of Age Discrimination. They didn’t care about How qualified you were, they were only interested in your age!! New College Graduates gladly accepted..The older, more experienced ones? The Waiting List awaits you.

    Can we really expect more from private companies?

  5. The whole system is jacked up. Age discrimination (which can also be called “experience discrimination” IMHO) starts affecting those in their 40s and only gets worse from there. Yet “full retirement age” according to the Social Security Administration is now 67 for those of us born 1960 and later…so in other words, you’re more or less expected to work longer while society considers you an expensive dinosaur whom companies want to get rid of so they can hire 20-somethings with a lower price tag.

    I currently have a job, but I don’t know what I’d do if I were suddenly jobless. As it is now I’m considering what kind of side hustle I can work on building over the next 3-5 years so I can at least supplement the pittance I’d get from that government-imposed Ponzi scheme.

    • This is why people over 55 make up 30% of the American homeless population, and are the fastest growing group of people experiencing homelessness. That doughnut hole between 55 and 65 is where people are ineligible for many programs. They lose health insurance through unemployment and it’s a downward spiral.

  6. When the inevitable DEI conversation arises in a job interview, I always ask the interviewer how the company/institution defines that. I then ask whether age and gender balance are part of the equation, especially if I’ve had a good glimpse of the personnel in the office. May not get me hired, but does put the hiring manager and/or HR on notice that older candidates are paying attention and taking notes. Age discrimination is illegal yet widely tolerated. Frankly, we need more lawsuits, especially a few high-profile cases, to break this trend. And mainstream media needs to report on this honestly and more frequently, instead of enabling it with commentary about older workers “sitting on the sidelines.”

  7. To highlight the pervasiveness of ageism, AARP recently conducted a Candid Camera-type experiment in which they had a food truck park on an urban street and placed a large sandwich board on the sidewalk reading “No One Over 40.” An actress was hired to enforce the ludicrous policy, “grilling” potential customers about their age before allowing them to order.

    Search online for “AARP Age Discrimination Food Truck” to find the video… worth watching if you have a few minutes.

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