| Topic Name: |
Getting hired at 35 plus |
| Message Name: |
retrain HR people |
| Date Posted: |
11/28/2000 |
| In Reply To: |
I have 30+ tears experience as an HR professional. In 1996 I was downsized and since then have had 2 jobs. Both times I had to take pay cuts after I convinced the interviwers that I was willing to work as hard as "all those young folks".
The first time I took 10 years off my resume, died my hair and they thought I was younger. After I was hired one of the interviwers I had become friends with said he had argued not to hire me because I was too old making assumptions like-too set in my ways, wouldn't want to work for less money, wouldn't take direction well.
The job lasted for 3 years until a buy out and I was downsized again.
The second time I did the smaller resume and hair dye again and I lied about how much money I made in my previous jobs. I had to persistently push a searh firm person to present me to my current company because they did not want someone who was overqualified (too old). I finally got to see them and told them I understood the "market forces" and simply wanted to be able to exercise the skills I had learned to help them acheive their objectives.
I got the job and then they were a bit surprised when my hair turned grey after a couple months. Since then I have heard comments like you don't act your age, meaning that I am energetic and open to new ideas. So far the job is going well.
I blame HR as a profession for the discrimination we older workers face. There are too many HR people who listen to the hiring managers (or make assumptions) and screen out applicants with a lot of experience. Shame on us.
I do recruiting and I do screen out managers who apply to become clerks, but I do not turn away people who have more experience just because they are older.
As we all age this will probably become less of a problem but HR should be doing more to point out how older workers can be more productive and require less supervision vs. "kids" who simply have a new degree or a couple years experience.
An HR "old Guy" |
| Message: |
I think (from experience) that a large problem with those of us over 40 and finding employment has been the HR "industry". The biggest problem I think is lack of foresight that's apparent in HR departments. If your resume isn't exactly as the ad is written, you can pretty much consider yourself thrown in the "circular file" .
I was in the engineering profession for many years. All of 10 years ago one could find jobs by assuming from the job title that a company had a large project in the works & would be looking for other positions. I had actually gotten a few jobs by writing a good cover letter in response to something like "Project Engineer", because pre HR & marketing depts, usually the person doing the resume screens either had an engineering background or may have even been a dept head and had the foresight of saying "hmm, I can use this guy in a month or so".
It seems in todays market the HR people have trouble getting beyond the "buzz" words or ad copy, and can't associate one's prior experience to another field.
I worked last year temping for a large clothing designer, just doing database entry. I had hoped to schmooze my way into the IT dept, being that I was free-lancing doing Y2K stuff. Now you'd think with almost two decades experience in engineering I could be seen as a natural troubleshooter right? Wrong... after watching the head of IT struggling with a workstation for 3 days, I finally asked him if he had checked the motherboard battery, after I heard him tell a colleague "if you leave these machines off for a while sometimes they will boot up". Did I even get offered a chance to submit my resume, nope..why?? I didn't have an MSCE. Perhaps I should have just let the company spend another 3 days in a manager's salary spoofing with a machine.
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