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I've seen tons of posters here looking to change careers by getting new degrees or those who are going for their first degree and trying to enter a new field and will be 30 or older when they finish.
I see other posters saying that companies will not hire 'older' entry level workers and those career changers will never find a job, even if it is a large field, such as IT and computers for instance. That field is well known for age discrimination.
So, I'd like to know, for people who wouldn't hire someone fresh in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or even 60s. Why?
Or for those that have seen this sort of thing, why do you think companies discriminate so much against age?
I haven't seen it in the companies I have worked for. Of course, I'm not the one who sifted through all of the resumes, typically.
I work in the IT industry in a non-technical role. I've seen the type of people we hire, and the gist seems to be that there is very little to no age discrimination in our company for experienced roles. But we are very rigid in the experience we want. So if we are looking for someone with "6 years experience in a database administrator role" or whatever, you better have that 6 years clearly on your resume, or you'll get screened out. But if you have it, doesn't matter if you are 24 and got that experience starting at 18, or if you are 44 and got it starting at 38. You'll get past screening, and if a good fit, will hire you. We actually just hired someone that's in their mid 40s last week.
But for ENTRY level positions, we do seem to track young, and I think that's just cause there aren't a lot of career changers over 30 or so. And if they are, their resume just looks a bit odd and will not get past HR screening. A non traditional resume may indicate that someone graduated 20 years ago from college with a degree in History, worked at a HS teacher for a while, and then all of a sudden wants to apply for this position at an entry level. Those type of applicants would generally lose out to someone fresh out of college.
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I do hire people, and got my current job at age 59. Since then I have hired 5 people of which one was 54, another 48. Other in my company have also hired people well over 50. I just don't see any age discrimination, but then we do specialized work where experience is important.
I've seen tons of posters here looking to change careers by getting new degrees or those who are going for their first degree and trying to enter a new field and will be 30 or older when they finish.
I see other posters saying that companies will not hire 'older' entry level workers and those career changers will never find a job, even if it is a large field, such as IT and computers for instance. That field is well known for age discrimination.
So, I'd like to know, for people who wouldn't hire someone fresh in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or even 60s. Why?
Or for those that have seen this sort of thing, why do you think companies discriminate so much against age?
I haven't seen it in the companies I have worked for. Of course, I'm not the one who sifted through all of the resumes, typically.
Is it really discrimination with no basis at all?
Age (or gender or race) discrimination doesn't make business sense because it raises labor rates. The lower the supply (lowered by discrimination), the higher the rate for a given demand.
Age discrimination is just too hard to prove. Also age discrimination laws only protect people 40 or over. People under 40 do get discriminated against but there is nothing they can do about it. I'm 28 and have already faced discrimination in the IT field. It also depends on the company and hiring manager.
I think a lot of people confuse salary discrimination with age discrimination. A replacement of a 15 year veteran with a college intern, even though superior, veteran candidates applied, can be legally justified by the difference in salary requirements alone.
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