Top ten ways to beat age bias in a job interview
Posted on 20 June 2010
By Mark Miller
Permanent URL of this article: http://retirementrevised.com/career/top-ten-ways-to-beat-age-bias-in-a-job-interview
Age discrimination in hiring is tough to prove, but it’s a widely-acknowledged reality.
How can you beat age bias in a job interview? Executive recruiter Joe Turner offers advice on interview strategy in a very useful post at Encore.org that explains how to answer tricky questions designed to disqualify older applicants, such as:
–Tell me about yourself (will you fit into the employer’s culture, and can you be managed);
–What are your salary requirements (you’re probably too expensive)
–With all your experience, you may be overqualified for this opportunity. Won’t this position bore you? (a variation on the salary/too expensive trap).
Read the full post at Encore.org.
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:25 pm
From the article: One way to respond to this…“Now I know you don’t actually feel that a person’s age has any relation to the performance of this job.” And then smile.
If I were an employer, that would send up all sorts of red flags about a potentially litigious employee. I know EEOC laws make it illegal to make judgments based on age, but sometimes I wonder if age-biases would be better thwarted by allowing interviewers and potential workers to address the issue head-on, so the old guy can be very direct about how he can meet the challenges of the company and the young guy can be very direct about what his concerns are. Otherwise, it seems like this sort of cat and mouse stuff just creates tension without solving the underlying problem (that occurs anyway).