Is this legal? Seems like age discrimination to recruit via this platform.
Show HN: Hire an Oldster
51–60 of 308 posts
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#52If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…
There are also other challenges that may not end up in a survey at all. For example, the hiring manager could feel insecure hiring someone older than they are.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#53If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…
I attended a lecture last week, older people were one of the topics that got touched. Instead of having old employees teaching the younger, he told a story of a business requiring old people to receive fresh young employees as their mentor.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#54If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…
> I don't think a job-board is the right solution to this problem because the pitch on TryOldster does nothing to alleviate the three principal concerns.
jobboard = take money from company who puts job ad
It's never been about solving the problem. It's about making money off the problem ;)
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#55I'm 40, in tech years that's like 1000. I also see value in hiring experience but explicitly factoring by age discriminates against a protected class in the USA. I think a lawsuit is in my future if I use this for placement at my company. Of course, if you simply rebranded to talk about "experience" rather than "age" then solvelem probbed. Also, age != experience != skill.
> age != experience != skill Or, as a former boss of mine put it: "He has one year of experience ten times."
> "He has one year of experience ten times."
Never understood this thing.
One learns the most when he changes company and learnt about a new industry, with new problems, new tech, new people.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#56If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…
I wonder what an effective approach would be for 40+'ers who don't have kids or other outside constraints. I'm thinking they wouldn't necessarily want to bring it up in an interview, since familial status is a protected class and employers may blanch at statements along these lines.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#57If you take a survey of hiring managers they will point to three primary reasons that candidates 40 - 60 have a harder time finding jobs: 1) They are typically more expensive than "market" for the same role a younger person can fulfill at acceptable tradeoff of competency - higher salaries, higher related costs like healthcare for a family, expectations around retirement programs, etc. 2) They are less flexible - the…
I look at the skillset between when I was 25 and now (30) and it's astounding. I can't imagine what the difference between 50 and 25 will be.
If you're hiring 40-60 year olds you cannot simply hire a 25 year old and get an "acceptable tradeoff of competency" unless you didn't need anything close to that competency in the first place.
Also if you're 50 and are relying on a new job's retirement program you're probably in for a rude awakening about when you can retire. That should be pretty close to set by that point. If it's not, the difference between matching 4% or 3%, or 75% match v. 100% is not going to be shaving more than a few months off your working career.
> They have less primary & secondary education relevant to today's enterprise issues.
I'm pretty knowledgeable about paid search and social but I don't think my Political Science degree has anything to do with that. To imply that someone's age precludes them from understanding paid search, mobile advertising, or social is the very definition of ageism.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe one year of experience, each in a specialized topic, which are all intertwined. I have 20 years experience in RF engineering, and probably a few years each in sub-disciplines that combine to form a full system. That is pretty valuable, especially being able to head off problems, due to prior experience with them.
A whole career of very short jobs isn't great though. One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on. Some older coders I work with might not have obsessively learned the latest framework, but they can identify issues like "that's the kind of subsystem that one person ends up maintaining, and then they leave and it's awful", or "We did…
> One particularly valuable kind of experience is seeing a project through and understanding how early decisions went awry later on.
That's a good take on it, and the application of it vary with companies and industries.
A waterfall EE project at a old school company could hardly deliver any stage in 6 months.
A software project at a fast executing startup could have gone through 2 major delivered projects in that time.
Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#59Re: Show HN: Hire an Oldster
#60I'm 40, in tech years that's like 1000. I also see value in hiring experience but explicitly factoring by age discriminates against a protected class in the USA. I think a lawsuit is in my future if I use this for placement at my company. Of course, if you simply rebranded to talk about "experience" rather than "age" then solvelem probbed. Also, age != experience != skill.
I worked for a recruiter for a while, and the euphemism used for age was 'seasoned'. "Company X isn't looking for anyone seasoned" "Company Y is open to seasoned individuals" Companies would also look for people who were a certain number of years of out school. Like, "5 to 10 years experience post-degree." Sure, that could technically mean a 45 year old who went back to school at 35 is qualified for the position, but…
I always find this kind of thinking to be counter productive - we are all going to be older. The people hiring, the people recruiting, they will all find the same bias working against them in the future - why not do future you a favor and not perpetuate the bias.