Challenges for Aging Job-Seekers

With age normally come a number of positive personal attributes, among them maturity, stability, life experience, and wisdom.  Yet, for the more seasoned job candidate (and I define more seasoned candidates as 40/50-something or older with 20 or more years of work experience), the process of finding a good job is not simply 2 or 3 times more difficult than for their more youthful, less experienced counterparts, but tens or even hundreds of times more exacting.

I often deal with candidates who have never had any particular difficulty in securing a top position relative to their background and level of experience, but nonetheless seem to hit an obstacle to their job-seeking success in their early to mid 40’s or 50’s.  Speaking with me, they express astonishment that their current search efforts are so far removed from their previous experiences.  They had heard and believed that age discrimination existed, but never considered that it would happen to them.

Of course, we all know that age discrimination exists and that it is illegal under Equal Employment Opportunity legislation.  Yet, not many of us consider the actual sources and motivations for the illicit practice.

When contemplated, one realizes that, as with all forms of human behavior, discrimination has its basis in primal human emotions.  The decisions made by human resources professionals and hiring managers are, like all human decisions, based upon reason, instinct, and emotion.  Hiring a job candidate is as much about appearance, interaction, and personal compatibility as it is about skills, experience, and education.

Consider your own reaction to the subject matter.  What concepts do you associate with aging?  If you are like most people, you think of loss of vigor, infirmity, inability to adapt to change, changes in posture and appearance, and perhaps even death.  Conversely, what do you associate with youth?  Health, vitality, comeliness, a thirst for knowledge, adaptability, and open-mindedness are among the characteristics that come to my mind.  And so, when one considers the emotional basis of age discrimination in the workplace, one must conclude that its roots lay at least partially on commonly-held perceptions of youth and age.

The other primary component of age discrimination, I believe, is economic.  Companies behave very much as do individuals.  When we as consumers shop for an item, we usually seek the best possible product at the lowest possible price.  The same, I believe, is true of companies.  Most companies establish compensation ranges for positions within their organizations.  When filling an opening, they attempt to begin the selected candidate at the lower end of the range for that position.  More seasoned candidates usually command, expect, and require a higher starting salary than do more youthful candidates.

Thus, for reasons of both human perception and economy, the younger candidate most often appears to be the better choice to a prospective employer.  The more seasoned candidate, therefore, must attack the potential for age discrimination at its roots.  It is imperative that he or she have better marketing materials (in the form of resumes, cover letters, and ancillary documents that do not reveal a potential age liability), a better strategy or plan to penetrate all areas of the job market, and the appropriate appearance and attitude at an interview to dispel any concerns of the hiring manager(s) associated with the candidate’s age.