San Francisco – If any publicly traded companies sell hair dye, now might be the time to buy their stock.
As more baby boomers see their hair turn gray in coming years, age discrimination is likely to send them running for the Grecian Formula before their next job interview.
That’s just what Marshall Levy did to give his gray-bearded face a youthful look after months of experiencing subtle age discrimination in job interviews.
Before he turned to hair dye, the first words Levy heard in a recent job interview with a telecom company manager were, “The average age around here is 28,” recounted Levy, a 57-year- old with 30 years’ experience as a finance executive in Chico, Calif.
It’s not clear what the hiring manager meant – Levy didn’t ask for clarification – but it seemed an unlikely moment to bring up age.
“I don’t fault any of the companies I interview with for not hiring me,” he said. “You want to make sure that the person you’re going to hire is going to be a good personality fit with the rest of your organization, but you can’t judge that just on ‘how old are you.”‘
Levy estimates he’s faced some form of age bias in more than half of his interviews, and it seems likely he’s not alone.
Questionable practices
“The concept that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks is total nonsense,” said Paul Boymel, an attorney in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s office of legal counsel.
“Every study has shown that, at least where heavy manual labor is not involved, older workers outperform younger workers as a class, with far less absenteeism, far less hopping from job to job, better work ethic,” he said. But “not everybody’s gotten that message.”
About 10 percent of the 17,800 age-discrimination claims filed last year with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were related to hiring.
But those figures undoubtedly leave uncounted a great number of job seekers who never file a claim even if they bear the brunt of age bias.
“It’s probably one of the lowest number of charges filed with the EEOC, not because it’s not prevalent but because they don’t have the proof,” said Laurie McCann, a senior attorney with AARP.
However, even some human- resources managers admit to the practice.
“Not only do I hear it from the candidates, I hear it from (human-resources) managers who should know better,” said Renee Ward, founder of Seniors4Hire.org, an online job resource board for older Americans.
At a recent conference, Ward asked a question of some personnel managers: If you posted a job requiring three to five years’ experience, would you deny the job to a candidate with 10 years’ experience solely because of those extra years? The consensus was yes, she said. “An older person can’t do this job,” a 30-something manager at a perfume company told Ward.
“She was just blatant about it,” Ward said, noting that three other people at the table agreed with the manager.
Charlotte, N.C., job seeker Chris Klos felt confident about one prospect recently. He had met with seven people, including a top executive, and the company was talking to him about salary and start date.
But in the middle of a day of meetings, the hiring managers abruptly asked Klos to complete an application form, and specifically directed him to include his high school graduation date.
The job offer dried up within 24 hours. Klos believes it was because of the gap between his college and high school graduation dates, four years longer than other job applicants because of his time in the military.
Later, he mentioned the story to his daughter, who had recently completed a personnel-management course at her firm.
“I talked about the abrupt demand” for graduation dates, Klos said. “Her jaw dropped open. She said, ‘Oh my God, they just taught us to do that.”‘ In her management course, Klos’ daughter was told to insist on high school graduation dates on application forms.
“This is our vehicle for making sure that you don’t inadvertently hire older employees,” Klos’ daughter was told.
When the EEOC investigates a claim, it looks at the company’s overall hiring. “If it turns out that the employer is only hiring people in their 20s even though 50 percent of their applicants are over 50, that’s questionable,” Boymel said.
Other forms of potentially actionable bias include “if the person in the interview was stupid enough to ask their age or make other age-related comments,” McCann said, such as “Do you have trouble working with younger people” or “This is a high-tech company – can you keep up?”
