Monday, Dec. 15, 2008 - 10:49 a.m.
Age Is the New Black
By: Professor of Marketing, Robert J. Mancuso, The University of California, at Irvine (UCI)
Hiring practices using age to discriminate is now fashionable [again]. Age is the New Black.
According to Kevin Fogarty of MKtng/Ladders.com age discrimination is prevalent in a variety of forms. Job seekers, career coaches and recruiters agree.
“Most often the discrimination isn't overt; it's more a function of who does the initial filtering of resumes and job candidates and the likelihood that those relatively junior staffers don't understand the real requirements of the job they're filling or what an experienced executive would bring to it”, says Fogarty.
Why is this permitted to happen? What about Constitutional Rights?
Clearly: Age is the New Black, and it is going to get worse. Be assured every one of us is going to glide into the age discrimination cross-hairs sooner or later. Something has to be done, and done now!
Where are our legislators and litigators on this issue?
With the aging of America, the current law prohibiting age discrimination among those over 40 needs to changed to include those “over 55” as well. With economic circumstances requiring people to work well into their 60’s age discrimination not only weakens the economic fabric of this country but also lowers the productivity and wisdom level of America in its competition with our foreign competitors.
Let’s be clear. 30-somthings don’t want to work with their Mothers and Fathers. They left those people behind when they left home and struck out on their own. Interviewing an individual with 20 years more experience causes a 30-somehting to race towards the exits. Why?
1. Senior professionals bring not only knowledge and experience with them, but also wisdom – an attribute not achieved in professionals with only 10-15 years of experience in total.
2. Senior professionals are scary. They might know more than their boss; they may be savvier; more experienced.
3. Senior professionals are a health-care/life insurance threat to the bottom line.
4. Senior professionals remind their younger professionals of their parents, and we can talk about how those relationships haven’t been the smoothest.
It's almost impossible for job candidates to tell whether they're being judged or passed over based on their age or their salary, according to Diane Grimard Wilson, a career coach who is president of Grimard Wilson Consulting Inc.
The sticking point could be just that the young interviewer is surprised to see gray hair on a candidate he or she assumed was younger.
"If you're an executive in your mid-50s who made it through the first screenings because you didn't put your first couple of jobs on your resume or excluded the year you graduated, you could walk into that interview and be talking to an HR person who's the age of your child," said Sally Haver, senior vice president at The Ayers Group/Career Partners International. Applications are designed to reveal a candidates age. Why?
With young professionals sweeping Barack Obama into the highest office in the country, we finally gave a sigh of relief that Martin Luther King’s dream has finally come true. What’s next? Well, this country seems to thrive on discrimination on the one hand and denouncing it on the other.
If Race can’t be the discriminator what else can we use? Firstly, a good discriminator has to be personal, covert and visually obvious. Religion is below the radar screen, and Sexual Preference even more subtle, what stands out is Age! Gray hair and wrinkled skin are the perfect facial cues to launch another discrimination surge. What’s more you can’t bus older employees to another department to equalize the problem. Moreover, Gender Discrimination doesn’t produce the same ROI as does Age Discrimination – women are paid 70% of what men are paid; but passing over an older experienced candidate can save you more when you bias toward the younger one.
Discrimination is neither legal nor fair. Nevertheless, it is prevalent and becoming more so as HR Departments look for deeper ways to discriminate among the multitude of candidates applying for fewer positions in this troubled economy.
When a senior professional says they are wiling to give up salary demands, they are told they are “over-qualified” – a euphemism for “your overwhelming knowledge and wisdom is too threatening to present employees and the cost/benefit system we have here” – despite the fact that turnover among younger professionals is twice as high as among senior professionals; not to mention youth’s lack of productive wisdom-based contributions.
br>Business has long profited from hiring young and cheap. Young people are willing to perform slave work at lower wages to get started. After five years or so they smarten up and leave, and are replaced by another low-pay workaholic start-up – because people who are willing to accept low pay are acceptable so long as you are young. What happens if a Senior Professional says they will take a pay cut and work a tedious job? They are told they would be unhappy with that position and that they would leave. Well? Isn’t that what eventually happens anyway with the younger ones?
Young and Cheap got us into the economic mess; Older and Wiser will pull us out!
Robert J. Mancuso
