This letter that appeared in Professional recruiter (what is an Oxymoron?)annoyed me two editions ago and I have been meaning to trash it:
http://www.professional-recruiter.co...m.asp?id=13319
Older and wiser
With the draft age discrimination regulations imminent, employers need to focus on experience and ability
posted 11:27am 12/07/05
CONTRIBUTOR: Philip Ayling
"Ageism is a recurring issue in our industry, and each time I am reminded of sporting prowess. For many years our top-flight sports players have the skill to ‘play’ at the pinnacle of their careers.
A few years on, they still retain the passion for sport, yet the physical drive to be able to play at the same level has waned. So what do they do? Many refocus their expertise, passion and commitment to other areas of sport, bringing with them all the attributes acquired while at the top of their game.
If you can do the job, regardless of age, or any other ‘ism’ for that matter, your ability should be paramount in the mind of the employer. As recruitment consultants, we need to educate managers to recruit with an open mind and to communicate to them the importance of new and varied experiences to their organisations’ development.
As an industry we have always recruited people on their ability to perform the role, so I believe we have been future-proofing ourselves well ahead of the imminent legislation. It’s in our best business interests to place as many candidates as possible based on their core skills, reinforcing that any discrimination is lacking in business sense.
Candidates develop at different speeds, yet two candidates with a 15-year age range are potentially capable of doing the same job. For example, are we to place redundant 50-year-olds on the scrap heap because they have chosen to work at a lower level than they are qualified, yet are perfectly capable of performing the job? Organisations will have to demonstrate valid reasons for turning these candidates down over a younger person with the same skills.
We have to continue to equip our clients with the knowledge and expertise to adhere to a higher moral code and recognise the gravitas that can come with experience. Just look at how many of our sporting greats go on to carve out new careers for themselves based on their former glory."It is the arrogance and the "sucking up" stupidity of someone who, by virtue of his experience in recruitment should know better. Excuse me but employers have been around long enough to know the types of people they should employ, not some loser from a tin pot body shop agency.
I rather fear that Mr Ayling thinks that by sucking up to people who know nothing about recruitment other than how to destroy jobs (the government), he can pick up some public sector business, or he can manipulate proper employers by making them feel guilty enough to lower their standards and thereby make it easier for him and his pokey agency to place people.
Let me point out the first fallacy, which is that racism and sexism are totally different from ageism and sexism is different from both. There is no excuse for discriminating against people on the basis of the colour of their skin at all. There is an excuse for discriminating against women which is that they tend to want to step out of the work environment to have kids.
There are many subtle reasons for discriminating against and for people on account of their age. If a company wishes to employ a marketing director in order that they can be groomed to become the next chief executive then they are going to want someone who has a track record of continual and fast moving success by the time they reach 30.
It is true that if someone has not made it to a certain level by a certain age they never will. On the other hand employers want to also employ people to repeat what they have done before (IT contractors are a classic example). So they tend to go for experience rather than potential.
This is how the subtleties of recruitment play themselves out. If someone has "cruised through their career" without really trying to push themselves, concentrating more on self preservation rather than moving forward, they invariably get made redundant. It is nothing to do with age that these people are out on the street, it is to do with how they themselves have managed their careers. They have no one else to blame than themselves.
You see "cruisers" everywhere, and many of them are good people, but they end up on the scrap heap at forty. The advantage of such a seemingly cruel system is that an intensively competitive labour market is kept forever on its toes.
By the same token employers themselves cannot sit back. Their best employees will be tracked down leaving them to compete in their market place with a bunch of old "cruisers"
Ayling uses the sportsman analogy of how many succesful sports people move on to become succesful in other jobs. I will bet anyone that they are not that successful and tend to become stereotyped as media presenters or the local tennis coach in the local park.
It does not occur to Ayling that top sportsmen in football, rugby, cricket, tennis are all under thirty. Older sportsmen have lost the physical and mental energy for sport by the time they are thirty five.. the same applies to workers. It is never ability that is the sole driver behind the selection of a worker, it is the attitude and drive behind that ability.
Recruitment consultancies should be helping their customers to work around the legislation rather than encouraging the state to meddle in our lives.
http://www.professional-recruiter.co...m.asp?id=13319
Older and wiser
With the draft age discrimination regulations imminent, employers need to focus on experience and ability
posted 11:27am 12/07/05
CONTRIBUTOR: Philip Ayling
"Ageism is a recurring issue in our industry, and each time I am reminded of sporting prowess. For many years our top-flight sports players have the skill to ‘play’ at the pinnacle of their careers.
A few years on, they still retain the passion for sport, yet the physical drive to be able to play at the same level has waned. So what do they do? Many refocus their expertise, passion and commitment to other areas of sport, bringing with them all the attributes acquired while at the top of their game.
If you can do the job, regardless of age, or any other ‘ism’ for that matter, your ability should be paramount in the mind of the employer. As recruitment consultants, we need to educate managers to recruit with an open mind and to communicate to them the importance of new and varied experiences to their organisations’ development.
As an industry we have always recruited people on their ability to perform the role, so I believe we have been future-proofing ourselves well ahead of the imminent legislation. It’s in our best business interests to place as many candidates as possible based on their core skills, reinforcing that any discrimination is lacking in business sense.
Candidates develop at different speeds, yet two candidates with a 15-year age range are potentially capable of doing the same job. For example, are we to place redundant 50-year-olds on the scrap heap because they have chosen to work at a lower level than they are qualified, yet are perfectly capable of performing the job? Organisations will have to demonstrate valid reasons for turning these candidates down over a younger person with the same skills.
We have to continue to equip our clients with the knowledge and expertise to adhere to a higher moral code and recognise the gravitas that can come with experience. Just look at how many of our sporting greats go on to carve out new careers for themselves based on their former glory."It is the arrogance and the "sucking up" stupidity of someone who, by virtue of his experience in recruitment should know better. Excuse me but employers have been around long enough to know the types of people they should employ, not some loser from a tin pot body shop agency.
I rather fear that Mr Ayling thinks that by sucking up to people who know nothing about recruitment other than how to destroy jobs (the government), he can pick up some public sector business, or he can manipulate proper employers by making them feel guilty enough to lower their standards and thereby make it easier for him and his pokey agency to place people.
Let me point out the first fallacy, which is that racism and sexism are totally different from ageism and sexism is different from both. There is no excuse for discriminating against people on the basis of the colour of their skin at all. There is an excuse for discriminating against women which is that they tend to want to step out of the work environment to have kids.
There are many subtle reasons for discriminating against and for people on account of their age. If a company wishes to employ a marketing director in order that they can be groomed to become the next chief executive then they are going to want someone who has a track record of continual and fast moving success by the time they reach 30.
It is true that if someone has not made it to a certain level by a certain age they never will. On the other hand employers want to also employ people to repeat what they have done before (IT contractors are a classic example). So they tend to go for experience rather than potential.
This is how the subtleties of recruitment play themselves out. If someone has "cruised through their career" without really trying to push themselves, concentrating more on self preservation rather than moving forward, they invariably get made redundant. It is nothing to do with age that these people are out on the street, it is to do with how they themselves have managed their careers. They have no one else to blame than themselves.
You see "cruisers" everywhere, and many of them are good people, but they end up on the scrap heap at forty. The advantage of such a seemingly cruel system is that an intensively competitive labour market is kept forever on its toes.
By the same token employers themselves cannot sit back. Their best employees will be tracked down leaving them to compete in their market place with a bunch of old "cruisers"
Ayling uses the sportsman analogy of how many succesful sports people move on to become succesful in other jobs. I will bet anyone that they are not that successful and tend to become stereotyped as media presenters or the local tennis coach in the local park.
It does not occur to Ayling that top sportsmen in football, rugby, cricket, tennis are all under thirty. Older sportsmen have lost the physical and mental energy for sport by the time they are thirty five.. the same applies to workers. It is never ability that is the sole driver behind the selection of a worker, it is the attitude and drive behind that ability.
Recruitment consultancies should be helping their customers to work around the legislation rather than encouraging the state to meddle in our lives.
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