AIBU to think this frustrating new work policy is age discriminatory?

[windygallows]

A few years ago a new HR policy at work decreed that job descriptions can no longer note years of experience and instead one can only ask for 'significant or relevant experience in...'. The reason for this is that apparently requiring years of experience discriminates against younger people who haven't done the time but may have relevant experience in their role.

One could also make a case that someone may have gained a great deal of experience in a short 2 years whereas someone else could have spent 10 years coasting, learning nothing at all. So fair point.

The problem is that in action this has become a tool for discriminating against older candidates. Across many business areas where I work almost all staff recruited have been in their 20s/early 30s and I have been on numerous group panels where we end up having to interview candidates with a huge variety of experience and the glossy, enthusiastic young people win over. (I don't always vote in their favour but in a large group tend to be overruled).

I could despair. It is very hard to find work as you get older (especially for women) and stupid policies like this demonstrate that there is no value in wisdom gained through length of time on the job. I really think that learning to manage, to deal with people, to lead projects and deal with problems comes with time and experience.

AIBU to find this frustrating and wrong?

If poor candidates are getting roles, your interview process needs improving.

Young bullshitters really piss me off too. The interviewers need more training in drilling down as pp said. To cut through bullshit. If that's what the role requires. Plenty of roles seem to be totally fine for bullshitters!

Have you heard of the layover test? It's choosing a candidate based on how you would feel if you were on a business trip together and your plane was delayed for 6h. Most of the time people seem to hire based on that..

I have benefited from the X years experience being removed.

I had 3 years of relevant experience, but I'm that time had probably worked with more companies, and managed and been managed by more people than many people will be in their entire working lives.

I got a job where all others in that role have circa 5-15 years more experience than me. But frankly, I'm better at my job than all of them.

Obviously there needs to be careful interview weighting so you don't end up with personal biases having an impact, but I don't think that's an issue with the X years experience being removed.

They will learn their lesson soon. Although I wouldn't hold out much hope, my company still hasn't. The big talkers still get hired when they know nothing. I do wonder how some of them managed it at times.

People love hiring young people because they can pay them a lot less money and treat them quite poorly.

You're right, it's all BS. Doesn't really do anyone any favours but I don't see what we can do to change it...

Are you finding that the young eager beavers then turn out to be lacking once recruited?

If so, you need to look at recruitment practice and decide what you actually mean by relevant experience. An example would be experience of implementations. Do you want someone who has taken part in multiple projects but then as soon as the project goes live rolled onto the next one or someone who has worked on projects then lived with the implementation post go live?

In a job description they may look very similar but in reality the experience is very different.

It’s. It discriminatory in the slightest

The company your work for sound like they are discriminatory in their candidate selection.

The policy itself though is no discriminatory.

You're playing catch up, I'm afraid.

We changed to a system like this years ago, to reduce age-related discrimination and to avoid Buggins turn.

If having experience is relevant, then we ask for it, up to a ceiling of two year. We can specify longer, if the relevant manager can justify it for business reasons, but I can't remember one ever doing so. Sometimes experience in more than one field is required, so that can mean a total of more years (if consecutive not overlapping).

We only specify that it must be recent experience where that can be justified (eg must have been after significant change in regulations, or since rollout of certain kit) because we don't want to exclude those who have had a break from the workforce and whose relevant experience is several years ago.

OP. This ‘policy’ is not new, it’s been around for years due to age discrimination regs.

YABU because the policy itself is not discriminatory, quite the opposite in fact.

However, it sounds as though your organisations recruitment practices ARE discriminatory if what you say is true nd you need to be raising that with them. Surely if all the ‘young’ candidates you recruit are turning out to be unsuccessful once they join you, you have the proof right there?

Unless of course, you’re just being biased yourself against younger candidates and making generalised, sweeping statements about their abilities? hmm]

It is a good policy in theory
Do you think they are discrimination at the interview stage due to the person been older.
It could very well be, younger more confident good a bluffing, it happens in loads of jobs OP, if it is not age, it is weight or sex. It is not fair. Yanbu.
Good looks and confidence plays a massive part in getting the job.

I agree that a lot of the issues I raise are the result of interviewees taking candidates claims at face value and not interrogating their experience enough

On the other hand if people recruit based on the 'layover method' noted below then they just end up hiring someone they like who is like them.

Dorset days I'm not being biased but unless a new recruit fails miserably in their role how can you determine if that new recruit is performing better or worse than any of the other candidates who were interviewed for the role?

Maybe the young people are getting the roles because they have had recent interview technique training whereas Sandra who has been in accounts for the last 20 years won't have.

Kpo - younger people may have relevant interview experience.

I just think there are some roles that really demand the wisdom that comes with age.

If the recruiting managers are choosing to shortlist people with 6 months’ experience, then presumably if they were allowed to specify a number of years, they wouldn’t put very many anyway?!

Similarly, if a recruiting manager wants to put 5 years’ experience but is not allowed to because of the policy, they could (and would) choose to only shortlist candidates with that level of experience. They are not compelled to shortlist candidates with less experience than they want to specify.

Having done a fair number of interviews I think the bullshitting is spread fairly evenly across the age groups, and across cultures. It is fairly easy to catch at interview with the right questions and just wastes everyone's time, I don't get why people do it. I have never seen a woman do it, but depressingly we don't get many, if any, female applicants (tech industry). I don't care if they are younger, or older, I have seen some unconscious bias towards older candidates, but not lots. It's just going to dependent on your company's culture.

Flowery. We are told we must shortlist all those who meet the essential criteria although agree with a big pool it is possible to veer towards the candidate that has more experience if you like.

The problem is not all recruiters think that way.

Op you are getting a right kicking here it seems.

We dont have that policy but we do have the issue you describe, in that we have an increasingly young workforce and we do go for the younger candidates if there is a choice between suitable individuals. As an aging woman I do not like it but I am not in a position to change it.

If you want to play the age discrimination card then it works both ways, asking for X years experience on a job advert discriminates against someone younger who may well have relevant skills and experience but not enough years.
YABVU and ridiculous as its NOT age discrimination
Speaking from frustrated experiences

Dorset days I'm not being biased but unless a new recruit fails miserably in their role how can you determine if that new recruit is performing better or worse than any of the other candidates who were interviewed for the rol

This makes no sense

You would never know.

Yeah I've never met anyone who with 2 years in the profession has the range and depth of experience that people doing the job for 10+ years have. I suspect they dont exist.

I have met a number of young bullshitters (exclusively male but I suppose women may do this too) who have tried to convince me they know it all after completing a degree and 18mo starter job but they really haven't. But our interview questions are pretty good at sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Well. How are theydoing workwise? Are they all still with the company and doing well?

Re "I just think there are some roles that really demand the wisdom that comes with age."

Age does not really equal wisdom. You can have 45 year old and 32 year old who will be very similar if not same in this regard.

Most people think they have 10 years experience. They don’t. They have 1 years experience that they’ve been repeating for 10 years which puts them at the same level as a 23 year old and pays accordingly as far as I’m concerned

In my industry interviews are very rarely proper panel or competency based interviews. What often matters is how much money they are asking for and younger people are cheaper. I like to recruit based on relevant experience because it's an industry that really does require relevant experience but it can be a struggle to convince those with the purse strings.

”We are told we must shortlist all those who meet the essential criteria although agree with a big pool it is possible to veer towards the candidate that has more experience if you like.”

If the essential criteria includes “significant experience” there would be no problem in not shortlisting someone with very little experience. The decisions made by recruiting managers are the issue, not the policy, which is very sensible.

I speak from personal experience. I’m good at what I do and progressed reasonably quickly as a result. I applied for an HR Manager job which very closely matched what I was already doing, in a very similar organisation, I mean my skills and experience could not have more closely matched what they needed. I would have been great. But they didn’t shortlist me because I didn’t have 8 years’ experience in HR. I had 5 years’ experience which included running an HR department on my own, advising senior managers and directors, including CEOs. But because I hadn’t sat in a junior role for longer before moving up, I was penalised. Utterly bonkers!

It’s a sensible policy your HR has put in place, and avoids ruling out perfectly good candidates for no valid reason. However it sounds like there might be an issue where you were in terms of managers having an unconscious bias towards younger candidates. Allowing people to specify an arbitrary number of years’ experience on job descriptions isn’t the answer to that problem.