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Age Discrimination

Our MD, no youngster himself, pontificates on the subject of discriminating against candidates on grounds of their age.

"Please ignore my apparent age.....I do." That's how an emailed application began when we advertised a Sales Director post in September, 2002. The sender was 58, and I was pleased to be able to reply, "I'm older than you."   So perhaps that gives away the root of my attitude.  I'm approaching the beginning of my seventh decade, I'm opposed to age discrimination - and maybe those two facts are connected.

Well, maybe.  But I'm also opposed to (and CBA Recruitment will not collude in) discrimination on grounds of sex, religion, nationality, ethnic background or sexual orientation.  And I'm a white, English-born heterosexual man who is not from an ethnic or religious minority.  So I'm going to ask you to believe that my objection to age discrimination is equally disinterested.

I don't believe that legislation can prevent discrimination.  Companies will start hiring more people in their fifties (and sixties) when two things happen: they realise that it's in their interests; and they feel comfortable doing it.  One thing I've noticed since I started placing people in jobs in 1990 is that it's becoming a lot easier - the number of companies that don't mind or don't even notice age is rising.  The purpose of this article is to encourage others to join those open-minded companies.

Psychotherapists like to tell the story about "cutting the ends off the ham."  In this story a woman notices that, every time her husband bakes a ham, he cuts the ends off before putting it into the tin. So she asks why, and he says, "Because my mother always did." 
So, next time she meets her mother-in-law, she asks, "When you bake a ham, do you cut the ends off first?" 
"Yes," says mother-in-law. 
"Why?" 
"Because my mother always did."
By great good fortune for the purposes of this story, the husband's grandmother is still alive. Meeting her at a family function, the wife asks, "When you bake a ham, do you cut the ends off first?" 
"Well," says Grannie, "I used to."
"Why?"
"Because I only had a small tin and, if I didn't, the ham wouldn't fit."

The reason psychotherapists like this story is because it illustrates a fundamental truth about perceptions which is: that many of the beliefs and values we hold dearest come to us from our grandparents, mediated through our parents; and that, although the sound reasons on which they were originally based have long disappeared, the beliefs and values remain.

This is not the place to discuss the importance of this idea in the therapeutic process.  Anyone who wants to talk about that can email me privately at cbarecruitment@btinternet.com.  The point for this article is simple.  Companies discriminate against candidates over 50 because they believe things about them that were true a generation or two ago but aren't true now.

The most important wrong ideas about today's 50+ generation concern physical fitness, mental agility and desire.  We are hampered by perceptions that we are out of shape, prone to illness, unable to think on our feet and without ambition.  I have to tell you, I don't recognise that as a description of me or of many of the people I know of my age.  Parts of it were more true of my parent's generation and even more so of my grandparent's generation but it isn't true of mine. 

Age discrimination persists because we approach people of 50+ as though they were the people of 50+ who lived before the welfare state - which for this generation means before free orange juice, free scrummy cod liver oil and free education as well as before free healthcare.  And it ignores that priceless attribute, experience.  (There's really only one way to get that.)
When we meet to discuss an assignment, I may ask if you have upper age limits.  If you say "Yes", I hope you'll be prepared to discuss it.