I was told yesterday that my resume is "too strong". That must be the new euphemism for "overqualified".
There is no way in hell that unemployment rates for accountants are under 5%.
I own several businesses and I’m in my 20’s. What you call “ageism” is really, in many cases, a reflection of changes in the free market and technology.
I’d love to hire older workers. But the reality is:
1.) For every older person that applies with the requisite coding skills (html, javascript, et cetera), I get maybe fifty people 35 and under. Statistically, it’s much less probable based on the sheer number of applicants that I’m going to be hiring an older person for the better paying jobs in a technology based firm. That’s just a function of the numbers.
2.) Most of my employees and friends are part of what sociologists call the “buster” generation (29 and under). Two of my most brilliant coders, guys who have made me millions of dollars, are gay. I’ve known them forever and they’ve been together since they were 18 years old, so almost 10 years. As a general rule (although this is not always the case), younger people have no problem assimilating into the culture and working with a diverse group of colleagues. We provide them with the best technology, designer coffee, huge discounts to our other family of companies, on-site video games so they can take breaks and play for as long as they want, and flexible work hours. They just want people that get the job done, have fun, and have the opportunity to get rich. People of older generations tend to have a problem with the fact that no one cares these dudes are gay, or if I let one of the secretaries have pink hair. (It’s like they expect us to get offended and when we don’t, get angry - my grandmother thinks I’ve lost my mind but then she wonders why I was able to build a company that made as much profit 4 years out of college as she did in 25 years of 18 hour days. It’s not hard: Hire the best people. Period. If you hire the winners, they are competitive by nature and your company will prosper.) In other words, if I think that an older worker is going to have a problem with my gay employees, or my non-conformist employees, they aren’t getting a callback. For the office to function, the culture has to be enjoyable and no one should feel like they’re going to have to defend who they are when they show up in the morning.
I really don’t think the older generation has any idea how out of touch they are in terms of culture, business, and personal freedom. I mean, we had one CEO of a major vendor stop in a couple of years ago and he couldn’t believe we “wasted our time” playing video games - how on Earth were we successful? (Yet, if we had been spending the same length of time playing golf or drinking at a bar, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. When I showed him the numbers that the video game industry dwarfs Hollywood in revenue, he was shocked.)