I’ve been a recruiter for 25 years. I’ve watched clients blindly pivot to younger candidate résumés for no viable reason. It’s a sad and unnecessary bias.
Personally, I can report that once my former boss learned I was 50, I lost my “most favorite status” and was pushed out of my former company after five years of exceptional service.
I now work for myself, which is great and daunting, but I really didn’t have a choice. Now, when I go visit clients, I scan the open office for people like me. Sadly, there aren’t any.
When I ask if ageism is part of a company’s diversity training, I get puzzled looks.
There’s absolutely a problem here.
— Daren J. Mongello, New York City
One may think that age discrimination occurs only here in the United States. Not so.
My sister, with a Ph.D, works in London. She, too, is paid less than her male peers. She mentioned to me that she was looking for another position. She said, “Who wants a wrinkly old lady?”
She’s only 58.
— Jeremy Rubock, West Hartford, Conn.
I was a “data processing” headhunter for 30 years through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s and I can let you in on a little secret: age discrimination was, and still is, the only form of discrimination still allowed in these litigious times.
If you could code, it didn’t matter if you were a minority, a woman or right off the boat — there was a job for you in the burgeoning tech market.