Hands down the biggest issue I hear about from around the world is age discrimination.

Sometimes, though, your age is the least of your problems.

Julie Walraven wrote Is It Age Discrimination Or Your Job Search Strategies?

Go read it.  If age is your problem, read the post carefully.

Age discrimination is real. It is out there.  BUT, someone who will discriminate based on age will also discriminate on other things, including height, weight, color, religion, race, number of teeth, how you smile, etc.  You just can’t win with everyone.

Maybe you need to focus more on strategies and tactics, and mastering those, rather than blaming your age.

I know Tim and Dick and Nick and many other job seeker advocates would agree.  Don’t throw in the towel and admit defeat because you are old (whether that is 40 or 60 or 70 or 80).  Focus on what you CAN influence and change!

Read Julie’s post here.

Old being 50.

I know, I know.  That’s not old.

But it is old enough to have discrimination.

Read what Nick says here: Over The Hill At 50?

Nick was recently an expert on my Ask The Expert webinar.  You can find his video in the Ask The Expert archive.

I like the Recruiting Animal.  A lot of people find him offensive but he brings out real issues and doesn’t let you hide behind rhetoric.  You can hear his show on Wednesdays.

Here’s something he wrote on Facebook earlier this month (I’m posting with his permission):

Yesterday, on The Recruiting Animal Show my guest was Chris Fields.

He wrote a blog posting in which he declared: “We all know that diversity helps make everything better.”

I challenged him on this. How is a Greek programmer better than an Italian programmer? How is a woman programmer better than a man?

What about a Dutch accountant? Better than a Russian accountant?

He hadn’t thought the issue through and all he could say was, “The teams I’ve worked on have always been better when they were diverse. I don’t want to work on a team full of me.”

But, in fact, he also said that people are naturally attracted to people like themselves. That’s why every minority needs affirmative action.

Because most of the hiring managers are going to be from the majority population and they are naturally going to favour people like themselves. Inotherwords, everyone in the world is, by nature, averse to diversity.

So, if people like people like themselves, how can teams be better when they are diverse? Chris didn’t tell us that either. He wants to come back on the show. And maybe he’ll have answers then.

When Ed Newman was a guest (here’s a less-than-three-minute clip), he said that diversity programs are just to prevent the standard bias in hiring. But they don’t promote innovation through the hiring of diverse thinkers.

There are a lot of things to hate about affirmative action, whether you are a minority or not.

It is an ingrained part of HR and hiring… so for now, how do you get around any decisions based on discriminatory hiring and focus on talents, skills, deliverables, etc?

Yesterday someone deleted their JibberJobber account and said that JibberJobber was “really dated.”

I emailed the person back asking for more information, hoping that it wasn’t because of the layout and colors (less than a year ago we redid the layout), but I knew it is impossible to please everyone.

He said he only spend 15 minutes on JibberJobber, and found links to Monster and articles that were 5+ years old.

I wondered what he was talking about, and where he saw a link recommending Monster.  As you know, I’m not a big fan of job boards in a job search strategy.  On the Ask the Expert call this week Nick Corcodilos shared that Monster accounted for about 1.3% of jobs found, but companies spent more than $1B on it.  And I’m sure job seekers spend way more than 1.3% of their time on Monster.  I only promote Monster as a place to do “competitive intelligence research,” not as a place to waste time getting sucked into the resume black hole.

Where did he find a link promoting Monster??

Finally, we figured it out.  In the user-curated Library.  This is where JibberJobber users share links, books and articles that they have found useful in their job search.  Monster was at the top of the “job board” category, which is at the top of the Links page.

And that was it.  This person, who has a decent title at a huge company, judged JibberJobber and said it is dated, because there is a link to Monster.

Again, we can’t please everyone.  Earlier that day I was on the weekly user webinar and I got a lot of very positive feedback about JibberJobber, the job search organizer.

Look folks, I’m not in the business of providing links to you to Monster and Craigs List.  I figure you are an adult and you can find all the links you want.  We put the library in for job seekers to share gems they find online.  When I was in my job search I think 90% of the advice articles where garbage.  But if I found a gem (here’s one that is in the library: How to Write a Strong Value Proposition (by Jill Konrath)), I wanted to save it for me and share it with others.

If you judge JibberJobber by what others put in there… I can’t really help you.

This morning I’ve spent time cleaning out the library.  That means deleting useless junk, and adding descriptions to good stuff.

Here’s why I am sharing this with you.  You will have people JUDGE you based on completely trivial, non-important, irrelevant things.

Like what?

When I was a hiring manager I judged on (I’m not saying it was right to do this, but I think it is human nature.  If you think less of me, sorry.  But I guarantee others are judging you on the same, or similar):

Hair style. The girl who had the biggest hair I’ve seen in an interview… her hair was such a distraction (and the thing I remembered most) that, well, she didn’t get the job.  But she did make it into this blog post!

Short skirts. I don’t know if this girl thought a short skirt would be a benefit to her interview but the entire time my mind kept thinking one thing: SHE WON’T FIT INTO THIS COMPANY CULTURE.  It was a conservative company, and her skirt was too short when she was standing (much less when she was sitting).  Do I remember her interview responses?  No, and that obviously didn’t matter.  She didn’t make the short-list.

The suit. I remember interviewing a dozen university students for three internship positions.  ONE person wore a suit.  The rest didn’t take the time to dress up enough.  What should have been normal (dressing up) really stood out and made a favorable impression.

There are other things like choice of words, chewing gum and stuff I’m sure they didn’t think about when they were preparing for the interview.

But they got JUDGED on those things.

Here’s the truth: I was looking for someone who would make me look awesome.  Someone who would do a great job, fit into the company culture, be fun to work with and have around, and not be an embarrassment (in other words, someone we didn’t have to keep in a back room, away from the front desk where visitors might see him/her).

As an interviewer, I’m the JUDGE.  And a JUDGE makes JUDGEMENTS.  The judgement could be on your answer and how clever or experienced you are, but it usually can’t get there until the other things (big hair, gum smacking, choice of language, clothes) are non-issues.

I’m kind of sad that one person decided not to use JibberJobber because the Library (a very, very minor part of JibberJobber – I don’t even show that on the user webinar!) had a link to Monster.

But he was the judge.

Be careful, my friends, to not let something in your appearance or brand or first impression be “the monster” that keeps you from going to the next step in the process.

(Monster is now deleted from my Library )

I don’t want to focus on this ridiculous article: Why Every Social Media Manager Should Be Under 25, or the 600+ comments on the article, most of them probably blasting the author.

I want to focus on a reality and truth:

YOU are being discriminated against.  Period.

As long as there are articles like this (and the many thousands of people who think like the author, but don’t have a platform or the time or guts to write about it), discrimination will exist.

I think this article had a backfire effect, which is to show young recent-grads as entitled, out-of-touch, and having poor judgement skills.

How do you defeat discrimination?  You can call for legislation (yeah, that will work – not), or you can figure out how to deal with it.

How do you communicate that the reason you are being discriminated against is not a liability?  Head-on and tactfully.

How do you do it? This is not a pink elephant… this is front-and-center, and probably the biggest concern my audiences across the U.S. worry about.

Want to read something disgusting?  Check out this article: Unemployed Black Women Pretends to Be White, Job Prospects Dramatically Increase

From the article:

“Two years ago, I noticed that Monster.com had added a “diversity questionnaire” to the site.  This gives an applicant the opportunity to identify their sex and race to potential employers.  Monster.com guarantees that this “option” will not jeopardize your chances of gaining employment.  You must answer this questionnaire in order to apply to a posted position—it cannot be skipped.”

Monster guarantees the option will not jeopordize the chances of getting a job?

How can they guarantee that?  And, if it cannot be skipped, it’s not an option!

This is maddening.  It’s crazy that it is anywhere on Monster’s page.  It should not be on there.  I’m guessing some HR knowitall asked for the breakdown in races for their equal opportunity reporting.

Monster should have stood up and said NO.

Alas, where does this leave us?  Folks, discrimination exists EVERYONE.  In your job search, in careers, in education, in stores, in parking lots, … everywhere.

How do people discriminate?

Let’s reword that.  How do people judge you?  How do people decide if they want to (hire, be around, recommend, etc.) you?

• Height
• Body shape
• Hair (lack of, color, style)
• Tattoos (which is more your choice than many of the others on this list)
• Clothes
• Handicaps (not sure what the latest PC way to say that is) – limp, canes, wheelchairs, blindness, etc.
• Religion
• Race (of course)
• Language (accent, stutter, slur, lisp, etc.)
• Ability to spell (sucks for dyslexics, doesn’t it?)
• Work history (job hopper?)
• Voice (too deep, to high, etc.)
• Age
• _____

There is no end to how people will make a 1/2 second judgement about you.

Because the person who does it is, well, human.  Susceptible to mood swings, prejudices from parents and community, misinformation (the media is a horrible advocate of racism and prejudice, in my opinion).

It is illegal, of course.  But tell that to people on the comments where I found the story.  They say the Justice Department is just as prejudice as companies are.

It is not right.  But it might be one of the worst problems in job search, career management, our life.

So then, what do you do?

Can you fight it?  How?

Can the issue ever go away?

Ah, the unthinkable atrocity. The horror!

Would a recruiter really lie to you, during one of the lowest parts of a job search (getting rejected)?

Of course.

Read The Recruiting Animal’s post: Why Recruiters Lie When Rejecting You.

He starts with this:

I’ll often see a recruiter puffing up her chest online and strutting around bragging about how transparent she is with candidates.

So, then, I’ll ask her, “If the hiring manager rejected a candidate because he didn’t like her voice, would you tell her that? Imagine he said, ‘She’s very intelligent but if I had to listen to that all day, I’d shoot myself.’ Would you pass that on?” continue reading…

What do you think? Would they tell you?

Here’s how he ends his post:

“So, remember this job hunters: recruiters aren’t social workers. It’s not their job to tell you how to improve. If they can, they will; but usually they can’t.” continue reading…

A little dose of reality from one who knows. Thanks Animal for the honesty.

Now, job seekers, where can you go to figure out what you are doing wrong? You know, the stuff a recruiter won’t tell you?

I gravitate towards blog posts from recruiters, and on age discrimination. I was delighted to find this one on Recruiting Blogs: Do You Know the Signs of Age Discrimination at Work?

The post is pretty good. The issue I have with some of the advice, like “document any discriminatory practices” and “document your work record” is that you would later have to do something with that documentation. I find that many people move on (get laid off, fired, etc.) and then sink into depression, blame themselves, focus on their next job, or anything other than pursue legal action.

I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just saying it is such a daunting concept, and maybe the wrong place to focus.

Here’s the most profound part of that page… in the comment from Randall, the fourth paragraph starts:

I’ll say that too many older jobseekers fixate of age discrimination.

I totally agree!

I’m definitely not saying that age discrimination doesn’t exist, because it is abundant.  What I’m saying is, I agree with Randall.  TOO MANY people FIXATE on the issue.

Don’t become obsessed with all the reasons why you aren’t seeing success… stop FIXATING on this one issue.

If it is an issue, figure out how to get around it.  How do you deal with it?  Do you ignore it?  Do you tackle it head on?

Fixating on this will not help you resolve it.  No, you won’t get younger, but you will be able to identify the issue and use the right language to perhaps defuse any issues.

Here are some other age discrimination in the job search posts I’ve written.