Ageism among employers

OU812

It's alive & well.

I'm early 40s, been looking for something for a while now & not getting much response at all.

I have a good CV, Years of experience in my field & am a stable prospect. But still very few responses & those that did bother to respond replied with a very polite PFO.

Someone suggested trimming the CV, so I cut the first nine years of experience off it, although it's highly relevant to my field. I just snipped it & now my starting year of employment is mid 90s instead of late 80s.

I've applied for five jobs in the last week & have landed interviews for four of them (haven't heard back from one, but that's not unusual these days).

So ageism raises it's ugly head, even though it's illegal.

Bandana boy

yes it is discriminatory (not illegal) but nearly impossible to prove on an individual case.
Having been around the block once or twice it is really contacts and networking that will secure you a job not blind applications .

Mr. Loverman

Bandana boy wrote: »

it is really contacts and networking that will secure you a job not blind applications .

Yep, absolutely true. (You should still do blind applications though).

Let me give you an example from my life this week.

I live in China. I don't really work. So right now I have a visa issue. It will expire in 6 weeks and there is not valid way for me to get a new visa without a lot of effort. (I used to just buy them but they've cracked down on that at the moment). So one of the options is go to Hong Kong and hope I can get some sort of tourist visa for 1 or 2 months, and then try to figure something else out in 1 or 2 months. Another option is to get a job. But I really don't want to teach English and it's not so easy to find a management job where I currently live without having good Chinese. (I have 5 year old child Chinese).

Over the past week I've been very nice to a local Chinese girl (helping her with her career... really no hidden motive... on my part at least...). It turns out her father owns a huge company and because I was kind to her she is arranging a fake job for me at her father's business. I don't have to do any work but I will get a real work visa.

Maybe I'm rambling a bit (didn't sleep properly) but what I'm trying to say is life is much easier and opportunities present themselves if you are sociable and have good relationships with people.

SCOOP 64

I was thinking my age maybe the problem from lack of respond to CV's , so last week i decided to leave out my start and finish dates from my previous jobs, apart from my last one,i never mention date of birth on my CV anyway but its easy to work out from the start date from your first job and so on, so i will see if i fair out any better, just need to get a foot in the door.

Jim2007

OU812 wrote: »

So ageism raises it's ugly head, even though it's illegal.

So you'd prefer to waste your time doing interviews for jobs you are not going to get or what?

peasant

Just the way it is ...

When you're young, they don't want to hire you because you haven't got enough experience. When you finally have enough of that they don't want to hire you because they think they can get a younger (read: CHEAPER !) person to do the job.

To limit frustration levels I'd recommend pouring your efforts into applying to a few realistic prospects only instead of any- and everything remotely suitable ...too many rejections only bring you down.

seamus

It can work in reverse too and younger people will get turned down for senior roles on the basis that if you're under 35 you're too young for management.

You could use that to your advantage and apply for more senior positions where your length of time in the workforce may count for more than whether you meet the job spec.