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COVID and the remote work revolution actually had an upside for over-50s. For the first time you could conduct a full series of interviews without anyone seeing
by cutler 5y ago
COVID and the remote work revolution actually had an upside for over-50s. For the first time you could conduct a full series of interviews without anyone seeing your face. Many companies are happy to conduct the initial interview by phone then send you a code test for stage 2. If you make it to stage 3 the company is in a much more compromised position rejecting you in a face-to-face over Zoom as the ageism would be obvious.
- emrah 5y agoI don't agree. If they can't find anything concrete to reject you on, they call it "culture fit" or lack there of and off you go.. How could you possibly prove it was agism?
- rocqua 5y agoI think blaming culture fit is widely known as 'we are discriminating, either explicitly or as a result of our own biases'. Once you have a pattern of bad culture fit with older people, feels like an easy case to make.
- cutler 5y agoI do a bit of screening at the outset. If a company even mentions "cultural fit" it ends there. We all know what "cultural fit" really means.
- bruce511 5y agoI guess for companies that have unlimited positions open this could help. But I feel like most companies hire to fill a specific post, and the most obvious reason for not being hired, is that they hired someone else. As an employer I have been in a situation where we had 3 perfectly good candidates for s position, any of the 3 would have been fine at the job, but there's only one post. There was no reason for rejecting 2 of them other than there was only one post to fill. While we didn't have discrimination issues to deal with there, it would be hard to show (if there had been) that we were being ageist or whatever. I can completely see though that hiring someone at say 30 may be more attractive than hiring a 58 year old. I might feel that a 58 year old will retire soon (so I have to hire all over again), or that they might have a "don't tell me how to do it, I've been doing this for 30 years" attitude, which can be unhelpful. That's balanced against greater experience meaning they should be better at the actual job. I can certainly see how over 55 makes you less attractive than compeditors for the spot.
- aws_ls 5y agoI think, this may be true, as I recently got a contact from big tech. And this did not happen in a long while for me. So I decided that I will give it a try, and a full heart-ed one at that, with leetcode 150 problem list, picked up from one HN story recently. And also would take a System Design course to brush up my presentation. I have been comfortable being useful doing remote work for a SV client for close to 4 years. But do worry a lot recently about ageism etc. So this page article and discussion is very useful for me. In some months, I will try to share my experience of 'how it went'. It will take that much time, as I would devote 6 weeks at least for learning, and then try to go through 2-3 tech companies in parallel, as per the common advise I have seen.
- oblio 4y agoGet a low res camera, dye your hair, heck, wear some make up if needed. Once they hire you, they're actually committed. (Almost) All's fair in love and interviewing.
- cutler 4y agoAbsolutely. I have an afro wig somewhere from when 70s retro clubs were the thing in London.
- oblio 4y agoI don't know if this is the case, but I wasn't joking. Dye your hair to your old natural hair color, nothing exotic. Wear a bit of makeup to hide wrinkles and other artifacts of aging.