Forties People

According to a recent survey, one in six over-50s think that they are treated like second-class citizens when they apply for jobs. Are they right, or has the world just changed?

“It wasn’t like this in my day.”

It’s a familiar phrase from the more ‘experienced’ candidate, reflecting the fact that for many people, common courtesy seems to be a good deal less common these days.

Maybe things were just different? Certainly, time now seems to be at more of a premium, and there’s more pressure on everyone to improve productivity. So has this meant that the niceties have been sacrificed for the sake of efficiency? Has effective time-cost management led to unacceptable compromises in the more personal side of the service industry?

There are examples in every industry. Fast food means less reliance on service. Self-service when filling up with petrol or buying a train ticket often means that there’s no service at all. Online shopping – and online recruitment – sometimes cuts out any human interaction at all, unless there’s a problem (and even then, it may be a challenge of epic proportions to reach a capable person who’s willing to assist!).

But does it matter if you receive an automated acknowledgement to your job enquiry? And is it important if you never get any feedback on your CV? Or if you never get a confirmation that you didn’t get the job you applied for? If the website says: ’If you don’t hear from us within 7 days, assume you haven’t got the job’ (or words to that effect), isn’t that enough?

Well apparently not. At least not for everyone.

Clearly, younger candidates have never known a world without laptops, mobiles, and 24/7 anywhere-in-the-world communications, so they have no reference point against which to judge the appeal of these services. Indeed, they expect instant access, whenever they want it, and many like the anonymity.

It is possible to have automated processes which recognise the individuality of candidates, and send them simple, personalised messages. Organisations which recognise this fact are beginning to win the hearts and minds of the audience, and there is a growing acceptance that efficiency and personal respect aren’t mutually exclusive.

Sadly though, even some face-to-face recruitment services such as the Government-funded job centres did not fare much better in the survey, in which staff were described as “patronising, unhelpful, disrespectful and totally failing to understand the value of experienced older workers within the workplace”.

So does recruitment discriminate against more mature candidates? There’s little evidence to suggest that there is anything inherent which supports this notion. But clearly there are some employers who still don’t appreciate the benefits of working with more mature staff.

More experienced candidates are simply more worldly, and can remember when personal service was the only kind of service. And they also have an inherent knowledge of how to treat people with manners and respect. In a world which is increasingly competitive, having employees who can deliver exceptional service can give organisations in all sectors a significant edge, and is surely ignored at their peril.