Yes. Ageism exists. It’s daunting to be in your 50’s, 60’s, and maybe 70’s and facing a job search when you’re convinced most hiring managers are not going to be interested in hiring you.
This, of course, is demotivating, and many accept it as a reason to give up – and some people don’t even bother to be proactive as a consequence of that false belief. Clients have reported they’ve made a passive effort, relying mostly on postings, with the feeling they’re not going to do particularly well, or will have to settle for something far less appropriate than their experience and skill set might indicate. Sometimes, that means depending only on postings (5-6% of the market), recruiters (7%), and friends (should be up to 85%), and not the real work of career transition, which is building new relationships and rebuilding old ones, person by person – and keeping those people “warm.” (Translation: That means making sure they remember you via several interactions.)
Mostly, the convictions that older people are not viable in the workplace are simply not borne out. Why is there a fairly widespread acceptance of the notion that older workers might not be worth hiring?
The Myths
One commonly held notion is that older people will work less, show less energy, and be less effective. Definition of “myth” - a widely held but false belief or idea.
Did anyone tell Ruth Bader Ginsburg that? Or Tom Brady, who is considered ancient for a professional athlete? Or Robert Caro, the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning biographer, who at 86 spent a year in Vietnam to complete his research on Lyndon Johnson?
The list of successful older workers is long, and the facts frequently destroy the myth.
Another notion is that older workers will be less flexible, less willing to adapt.
Or, yet another - older people will resist new technology – or any technology, for that matter.
One major fear of employers is the assumption that older workers will be expensive, or even a threat to the person who hires them.
There is also the fear that older people are more likely to have health problems. True. But true for everyone?
Solutions
Numbers. There are too many hiring managers, recruiters, and Human Resources professionals (Human Capital Management? People? Talent Management? Manpower Planning? Human Asset Management? I wish I could remember all the inane corporate euphemisms. Why couldn’t we stick with Personnel?) who buy into the negative perceptions about older people. They’re trying to match resumes and LinkedIn profiles with job specification lists. Many of these staffing professionals will eliminate well qualified candidates based on paper or digital representations, and frequently bypass the best candidates. Or manage to find things on a resume that play into an irrational bias. Resumes or LinkedIn can’t talk for you, but an in-person meeting enables a job applicant to defuse any potentially negative perceptions.
No matter how many ways career advisors advise older clients to remove college dates of graduation from the resume, or eliminate the first few jobs, experienced staffing professionals will be able to figure out that the applicant might be over 45 or 50.
What to do? Those concrete decision makers don’t account for everyone who hires new employees. There are creative hiring managers, and creative Human Resources professionals, who can see beyond age, beyond the resume and LinkedIn profile, and see the value in the candidate. How to get to these people? Numbers. The more people you see in your relationship-building efforts, the more likely you are to find the more flexible, non-concrete, thinkers. It’s a matter of odds, pure and simple. This means working extra hard at building a more extensive network, increasing the opportunities of meeting the right people in the process.
Many years ago, when I was a staffing officer with what was then called The Chase Manhattan Bank (and no, the bank was not named for one of my ancestors), I met a 32-year-old applicant. I saw a gap in his resume for the previous year, and asked about it. He told me that he and his wife (and one-year old!) had decided to take off a year and travel around the world; they figured this would probably be the only time they’d have the opportunity. This intrigued me, so I asked about the experience (I was also curious as to how they handled it with a one-year old!). He told me he and his wife had been having trouble getting a job since returning, because employers had asked them about the year, and were put off by a 32-year-old and his wife setting back their career by taking a year off.
There are so many things wrong with that line of thinking that I can’t get into all of it here, but the main point is that I thought this applicant was more interesting and more creative than most, a risk taker, and a thoughtful person with depth. He had found the right person (those odds mentioned above were working in his favor), in terms of who might hire him, but many he had met had the opposite impression, that something was wrong with him. By expanding his network as much as possible, he was able to find those who thought his year off was an interesting asset.
I was careful to send him to a division executive who thought as I did, and the candidate was hired. It won’t always happen quite that way, but, again, the more relationships you build the better the numbers will be for you.
Another way to defeat the misperceptions about older workers is to show energy from the outset. Even with an approach email. When I was first a staffing professional, I recall learning quickly that enthusiastic, high energy applicants were far more likely to be hired. No one wants to hire someone who looks frightened, anxious, or devoid of energy. Decision makers like an applicant to not only show enthusiasm, but to show excitement about the position. Think of the networking meetings and interviews as performances. You may not like the process much; or you might get anxious. It doesn’t really matter what you’re feeling; it matters how you’re perceived. Yes, it sounds superficial, but presenting in an energetic and enthusiastic manner goes a long way. It does for all ages, but particularly for older job applicants who are overcoming a misperception.
Show excitement about past positions. As I say to everyone I meet professionally, your career has been “sunshine, light, and success.” No complaints, no negatives. Negatives only reflect on you, not the former employer. You’ve loved your career, have had significant accomplishments to relate, and are excited about this next phase.
Think before a networking meeting or an interview about how you’re going to pre-empt the interviewer’s misconceptions, and show energy and enthusiasm right away. Figure out a way to talk about how you have successfully used technology, for example. When you’re confronted with a remark about how you might be overqualified (this is almost always about money issues), say that perhaps you’ve miscommunicated; the job you’re applying for is a great fit because… Make it tough for people to throw that overqualified thing at you.
A note: Many older men have asked me about hair issues, i.e., whether to hide hair loss, or dye gray hair. No. You want to be hired for who you are, plus a lot of people with dark black hair at 60 look, um, a little strange. Of course, men and women want to dress appropriately and well. Did I need to write that? Not always sure. Again, showing energy and enthusiasm will trump any appearance issues.
Once these misperceptions are fixed, it’s time to polish up relationship building/networking skills, of course. With the suggestions above, the search should go better than you had feared. Don’t give into the myths. Keep this in mind whenever you face ageism. And then…move on.
For more on this topic, you can view my recent webinar:
Ageism in Your Career Transition, And How to Get Past It.
