In the current job market and economy, hunting for jobs is difficult for everyone. The competition is fierce and there are always so many people who apply. If you are on the hiring side of this equation, there might be some bias towards overlooking older candidates. There definitely is some stigma about aging and work performance, even though many recent studies little proof that older people are outperformed by their younger peers. Here are some good reasons to hire a middle-Aged Job Seeker.
Proven track record
Depending on the job, previous experience and achievements may be crucial for the success of the candidate. Young candidates may have the stamina, ambition and drive to learn and do great things. But it is the proven ability to actually do the job that will help your organisation.
Varied and rich experience
A person with several jobs behind will have gone through a lot of learning, both in the technical and in the human relations domains. Unless you have someone who simply can’t keep a job and hence the frequent changes, you will definitely benefit from the rich experience that the person in their midlife has. Even more important than technical knowledge, the ability to navigate the complex human relations at work may be a very valuable asset.
Emotional experience
We often hear how there is no place for emotions at work, but that notion would strip us of our own humanity, if we all complied with it. In fact, most great products would never exist if the people who created them were not emotionally rich. Emotional experience is getting more traction in the product design nowadays. But it is not just in product design that a person who is emotionally mature will make a good addition to your company. The maturity that comes with a rich emotional experience enables the person to connect to others in a meaningful way and create great bonds both within their team and with the potential customers.
Balance of ambition and stability
While youth may be unstoppable, age knows its limits and understands more about what truly matters. If they are happy with the current job, a middle-aged job seeker will not rush to any given opportunity to earn a few more bucks and leave you on thin ice. Instead, they will weigh the opportunity hard and will not take un-calculated risks, both about their own career and about decisions that they need to make in their work. This means that, in majority of cases, a good match will be made for both the company and the worker.
Of course, any generalization is bound to be dangerous and I am sure that there are plenty of opposite opinions. However, we will never remove the unnecessary stigma unless we point out that most of what the stigma is based on, is either incorrect or exaggerated.
For example, you will often hear that older workers are slower learners than younger ones or less likely to embrace change. This is an incorrect cliché. “There is more skill and performance variation within the same age group than between different age groups. “¹What this says to us that the individual difference put more weight on some of the “employability” factors than age.
- Donald M. Truxillo, Ph.D, Age and Work Performance: Myths and Realities, available here
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