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ARTS AND CULTURE

Ageism in the jobs market

  • 16 July 2012
Lets go on a journey together to the online jobs site seek.com.au, wander through the bits and bytes of the virtual employment market and discover how some recruiters and their clients seek to favour youth over experience.

No longer are job advertisements dry copy, written by the paymaster or secretary. Today, recruiters are the fishermen and women of the online world.

How they skewer words, twist syntax and sweeten meaning is an artform. Their baits are numerous: salary, career, fringe benefits, bonus structure, upward progression and let us not forget the clarion call of those who like it 'dynamic', 'young' and 'funky'.

For recruiters, the world is just a spinning ball. Work is a cabaret — Come to the cabaret.

Go to seek.com.au. Enter under the location 'Sydney'. Make the classification 'Any Classification' and enter the keywords: 'Dynamic, Young, Funky (or Fun).' Hit the 'seek' button.

You will have before you about 24 job advertisements posted, in the main, by recruitment agencies. We could have got between 300–400 hits if we had searched only for Young and Dynamic. But I like it Funky too!

The jobs displayed all have a high tolerance for those applicants who, by self-assessment, display all three characteristics. Note how most of the jobs are in the area of media sales, fashion and IT, but they can include advertising and web design.

When I worked for DEEWR (the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations ) in mature age programs, I would spend a relaxing Friday afternoon (with a cup of tea and public service regulation sultana cake) calling these recruiters.

The first call was to remind them about the Age Discrimination Act of 2004 and how advertisements should focus on the skills, competencies and capabilities of the position rather than the applicant's age.

To a young man and woman (aged between 25–30), they were the nicest, most polite people one could ever hope to talk to. They listened. They took notes. They agreed with everything I said. These were the type of people who could help me realise the full functionality of my iPhone. They knew stuff.

So it was with some curiosity that I would call back a week or so later to ask why they had not changed the copy on their online advertisements.

It had to do with money. The client wanted young people. The client wanted 'graduates'. The client wanted attractive young women with sales experience — they didn't want an old fogey
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