Hi Everyone,
My name is Robb and I wrote the topic ‘Ageism? Good Idea?’.
I wrote this topic to provoke debate about a very important issue in our industry.
I am 55 years old and many of you will have egg on your faces over that bit of knowledge. I have been in the IT industry for more than 15 years and I am now a sage-like soul who now teaches IT technologies to people who want to work in my industry. One of the questions that they ask me, is “Can I get a job at my age in IT?”. Because the majority of my students are military Resettlement folk, they are over 35 (in most cases). I always calm their fears by telling them just how tolerant we IT folk are and how age is a real asset. But, to be truthful, I am not sure that this is correct.
To Test this I made myself ‘unemployed’ and applied for 100 IT jobs. I wrote out a ‘proper’ CV/Resume and placed my current photograph on it. I stated my age and my qualifications correctly and I also made sure that any referees I stated would respond. Out of the 100 vacancies that I applied for over a two month period I did not received ANY offers of an interview.
I then changed my age and placed a photo of myself taken when I was 30 years old, on the CV. I sent the CV to around 25 companies (some of the original 100 too!) and have received 12 offers of interview and one direct offer of a job. 3 offers came form three of the original companies that did not respond to my ‘truthful’ CV.
This was not a scientific piece of research, I know that. But I believe that despite the laws about ageism and so on, in my country (UK) and in the USA, the fact remains that ageism is practiced, if not blatently, then in the minds of many of us.
I was intersted to note the many responses to my original article. May I thank all of those who took the time to respond.
I plan to take this issue further, but right now I have to start to earn a living again.
Does anyone have any vacancies?
Best regards – Happy Trails
Robb