<p>I work for a very large corporation and we hire people over 50 all the time. In my new department (IT), I’m by far the youngest one. Half the people around me (quite literally) have just celebrated their 25 year anniversary with the company. They nick named me baby the moment they met me. It’s quite funny.</p>
<p>I don’t know what kind of job you’re looking for, but how are your computer skills? My younger sister just applied for an accounting job. She has a business degree and had taken accounting courses but had no work experience with accounting. She’s great at excel and word and things like that though. She just posted for this job at the place where she has worked the last two years. It wasn’t just an internal posting, they had external applicants as well. In the end it came down to her, and one other lady who had 20 years of accounting experience, but was slow as can be on the computer. They wound up hiring my sister - they said she’ll pick up accounting faster then the other lady will pick up the computer. The fact that she already works there and knows their systems definitely helped too. I felt bad for the older woman but I probably would have made the same decision in that situation.</p>
<p>Well performersmom…I don’t know if congrats are in order…my wife did not get the job.</p>
<p>I don’t want to get too detailed. My wife was a stay at home mom for almost two decades and she did a tremendous amount of volunteer work doing that time.</p>
<p>Then she had a job with a small real estate developer…they just developed a 20 million dollar project. Two people did most of the work. Her boss and her.</p>
<p>Now…she is going to be out of work. </p>
<p>Applied for a job that she was more than qualified for…she did tell the interviewer…she wanted opportunities to take on more responsibility. She did not get the job. They had tons of applicants.</p>
<p>She was offered a job from my boss…to work on real estate projects he is developing…and she said, “No”</p>
<p>She is sick of real estate. And my boss…who is one of my best friends…has ADD. </p>
<p>He has a good demeanor…but he is very difficult to work with. ;)</p>
<p>He was bugging me and bugging me to get my wife to take the job. For
a month.
Then today…he calls me…he is going to limit the development and get out of the business. One of his partners is too difficult to deal with…life is too short. The partner has zero business sense. What do you expect? The guy graduated from Harvard. Lol</p>
<p>So the job…would have been over before it started. Lol</p>
<p>Which reminds me…I am supposed to call him …:)</p>
<p>It takes about a year for employees to get familiar with our local code base, environment, processes and procedures and then additional years to branch outside into the overall code base. The problem with kids out of college is that many of them don’t stick around long enough for us to recoup our training costs.</p>
<p>What I see as important is hiring someone who will be a good fit and be happy in the position and stick around for a long time. The company provides a lot of perks to keep employees happy but we don’t want someone that just needs a job with us until they can find what they are really looking for.</p>
<p>My wife was also a stay at home mom for 20+ years although she had some part time work and also had some chronic illnesses she had to work around which basically kept her out of the work force. She is now doing personal training and things are going really well. It helps that my job covers health care and retirement. I think working for yourself is a perfect situation but only if you have a spouse that can provide the two big necessities.</p>
<p>wow I can relate. Turning fifty next week. I’ve been self employed for ten years and now I want a change. Live in a small town with not a lot of opportunity, no large corporations. I’ve been very active in the community, lived here twenty years. Been looking for about a year. Can’t find anything much out there. My age is a definite factor and one of the reasons I’m looking. DH is self employed too, I want medical benefits. I keep getting the line that we love you but you are overqualified.
Finally agreed to take a four month position no bennies filling in for a maternity leave. I’m hoping they will love me and find something else for me when the new mother returns to work, or that another position in a different district will open up.</p>
This is true but I have a reasonable level of confidence that the college grad software developers I hired will be pretty happy in their positions, with their responsibility opportunities, and with the company to stick around long enough to be worth it. They’ve been able to come up to speed pretty quickly but the ones I’ve hired were quite capable. The older people I’ve hired have generally been good as well and shouldn’t require a year to come up to speed due to their experience but the problem with some of the more experienced and older people is they’re actually less of a known commodity since what’s on the resume doesn’t always translate directly to qualifications whereas the college grads are more predictable in the their skill levels and capabilities.</p>
<p>Although I hope the employees will stick around longer than a couple of years it’d be unreasonable for me to not hire someone aged 50 because they might want to retire in 15 years and realistically I know that anyone can leave at any time anyway so I don’t see a major advantage hiring someone aged 30 vs 50 because of worries about them not being around long enough.</p>
<p>“but the problem with some of the more experienced and older people . . . what’s on the resume doesn’t always translate directly to qualifications whereas the college grads are more predictable in the their skill levels and capabilities.”</p>
<p>GladGradDad – Could you explain what you mean by this?</p>
<p>I am fairly certain I was discriminated against due to age in my recent job hunt (no visible gray hair, bmi<25, don’t dress in a matronly fashion …). A couple friends experienced the same. It’s hard to prove, but it certainly seems like it happened.</p>
<p>Good news is, we were all eventually hired. Who wants to work for someone who doesn’t value experience, anyway?!</p>
<p>I mean that when I hire a new college grad I know almost exactly what their experience level is including the courses they took, the grades they received on the courses (I review the transcript), and generally the difficulty level of their college, but with someone who has been in the workforce for a long time I’m going by what’s on their resume which is something that’s ‘enhanced’ by many people and much more difficult to quantify. People can come up with impressive resumes, including the companies they’ve worked for, but then when hired you find out they’re really not at the level the resume would imply. There’s much more consistency with new college grads.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t hire the person with more experience, just that it’s actually a lesser known commodity, but sometimes you need or want more highly experienced people. If someone has run their own business like yours there’s the downside of no validation of other companies having hired the person but the upside of someone who’s run their own business with all of the experience that implies.</p>
<p>The best thing is for the employer to keep as open minded as possible.</p>
<p>We have a 100 million+ line code base with code going back to the
1970s. I don’t know anyone that can come up to speed quickly on our
code base, policies and procedures.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We hire from MIT, Stanford, Brown, Princeton, Berkeley and a few other
schools that excel on the majors we look for. We’ve been lately hiring
fewer with just undergraduate degrees because of the problem of them
not sticking around.</p>
<p>The older people that we hire tend to be network arrangements so there
is someone inside that knows the work of the older person coming in.</p>
<p>dstark,
Sorry to hear about your W, but she had basically good instincts.
At least she has something very current on her resume for the job hunt, and a decent reason for the job ending.
Do let us know how that goes!
Good luck to her.</p>
<p>Are there any people here who hire for NON-tech companies??</p>
<p>I’ve had some employees leave but not many and not in the first few years.</p>
<p>LOL on the code back to the 70s - I don’t mean any offense but any code that old has been re-coded to a more modern code base. I also am not doing some huge defense oriented code base where there can be a lot of constraints (maybe that’s what your company’s doing?). Just trying to attract people to stick with a code base like that can be a problem when they know they can go elsewhere and have more control themselves with a more modern code base using perhaps newer technologies. Again, I mean no offense and know nothing about your actual projects but this last bit can definitely be a factor in being able to sometimes attract and definitely retain some employees - especially the younger ones.</p>
<p>I’ve actually had more bad luck with some of the ‘recommended hires’ than the college hires since sometimes the person just doesn’t live up to the expectations, including of the person who recommended them.</p>
<p>This isn’t black or white and I’m not trying to imply that it is which is why the OP should not let the possibility of some age discrimination be too discouraging because there’s no single type of individual that’s best for a given situation.</p>
<p>I used to work in corporate field service at a company and companies
would pay us thousands, tens of thousands per month for service
contracts on computers that we no longer made. I once had a look
into why they were paying us so much money to maintain ancient
equipment and then found out that they were used in submarines
and other naval vessels.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We have customers that want product visibility and support going out
ten years and sometimes more than that so you need some level of
product stability and changing programming languages from something
that has worked for a long time can destabilize environents for
companies that want a super-stable environment.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>We do two days of interviews for candidates. For MS and Phd candidates,
we do a day of interviews and then bring them in to do presentations
on their research and then ask questions. My local group has mainly
only Phds lately.</p>
<p>“If someone has run their own business like yours there’s the downside of no validation of other companies having hired the person but the upside of someone who’s run their own business with all of the experience that implies.”</p>
<p>This is helpful for me to understand a hiring agent’s mindset. But you say I would have no validation of other companies that have hired me. In actuality, I’m consulting for five companies right now – which can be verified. Would this provide the “validation” you would need?</p>
<p>A few years ago (at age 50) I was looking for a job after 10+ years as a SAHM. I was hired very quickly, however I hated the job (lots of reasons) and quit after 6 months. I had no problem getting hired again ( I actually had two offers and was considering both). I’m now 54 and been at this job for 3 years and love it. Hopefully I will retire from this company in 12 years. My co-workers are all ages, but many of them are over 45 and I know that others over 50 have been hired since me. </p>
<p>There are companies out there like this. Good luck cbug!</p>
<p>Get the What Not To Wear guys on your team, LOL. It is amazing what a difference an appropriate wardrobe and updated hairdo/make up can make in how a person is perceived. In the long run, your new employer will get to know the “real you.” But in the short run of the interview, you want to put your best foot forward.</p>
<p>By ‘validation’ of the other companies I just meant that if one can see on the resume that company x, company y, and company z all hired the person and employed the person for a number of years each it’s some kind of validation of the person. </p>
<p>With the ‘consulting’ for the 5 companies right now or probably more over an extended period of time it seems that it’d be some level of validation - all depending on what you do. If you’ve been doing this successfully over a lot of years and are currently successful as well then you must be doing something right which would be a validation right there.</p>