I have a friend (she is a recruiter as it happens) who went for an interview recently. She was meeting with an agency recruiter who had an inhouse role for her.
During the interview he said to her “so, how old are you….. 45.. 46?”
Now, if I’m honest I’m not in the least bit surprised that recruiters still care about age. It doesn’t surprise me that client’s instruct the recruiter as to what age candidate they will/won’t consider.
However, it does make me very cross when a recruitment consultant does something so dumb as to explicitly ask the question of someone they are interviewing.
What do you think?
I think the recruiter who asked has either been poorly trained or is an complete idiot, possibly and probably both.
Apart from the obvious illegalities of how the recruiter may have used her age, I just don’t get why they wanted it confirming if they thought they had guessed it… Stupid and pointless.
Ageism is a new prejudice and this Recruiter sounds as if he is in the Wayne Kerr shallow /dopey mould.
In the Recruitment sector ageism seems to kick in at 35!!
Yes, pointless, stupid, illegal etc. etc. Here’s the real issue. If someone can demonstrate a consistent track record of success and achievement relative to the position in question, their age is almost certainly quite irrelevant. Successful people don’t just suddenly turn into some kind of useless career pumpkin once they hit a certain age whether it’s 40, 45, 50 or 55. I’m guessing there was a rather different angle to this person’s agenda. Just as unpleasant but not competence based.
Yes we all know that Ageism is illegal and not acceptable – but we also know that some clients demand an age-specific team exactly as they used to look for gender/race specific teams in the ‘dark ages’. I work with companies trying to promote age-awareness and a more age-diverse strategy – but it is a long hard struggle.