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?

@Inliverpool1 nailed it.

inliverpool has it

Someone said to me at interview, when I claimed 5 years experience ‚‘ah, but DOyou have 5 years experience, or just 1 years experience 5 times over‘

Fortunately for me I did demonstratrably have 5 years experience, but the reason I wanted out of that job was because I was in danger of repeating that last year over and over.

there is no value in wisdom gained through length of time on the job

Corretct, there usually isn't. People rarely have ten years' experience. What they have is one year's experience, ten times, if that. The "wisdom" they obtained ten years ago is often outdated, irrelevant or simply wrong. If they obtained actual skills in that time they will be able to articulate them, but just "I've done the same thing for a long time?" It's rarely anything like as useful as is made out. Would I rather have an operation from a doctor who has been doing it for a couple of years rather than someone who did their first yesterday? Yes. Would I care if they have twenty or two years' experience? No. The surgeons at Bristol Cardiac Care had been doing the job for decades; Jacob Louis Veldhuyzen van Zanten was fifty and the chief pilot of KLM when he killed 583 people. Experience is over-rated.

Within one organisation they sometimes act as institutional memory, which can be useful. But I am far more interested in what people can prove they know how to do, and are good at, than some vague sense that their having done a related job in the Thatcher years is of value to me now. And most hiring and recruitment practices agree with me (note: I am not some young whippersnapper, and started a completely new role in my fifties).

OP you sound a little biased to me when you refer to younger candidates as ‘glossy’ and are a little disparaging about their possible experience.

I don’t agree at all that simply being in a job for ages automatically makes you good at it. On the contrary it can sometimes mean that the person is stuck in a rut or can’t be bothered to move on.

You answered your own question in your first post btw so not sure why you won’t accept the views of numerous people on here who are saying very clearly that YABU because the policy is NOT discriminatory.

There will ALWAYS be a bias, young or old, for people who are 'good talkers'. They can make what is on paper (and perhaps in reality) weak experience sound amazing and win the job. I'm an introvert and I struggle a bit with speech impediments under pressure, and I have had to work really hard at interview technique, following several instances of being the most experienced, highest performing and best suited candidate for a role (internal) and being leap frogged by the latest smooth talking arrogant young man.

Literally, in one case, another candidate lied and said they were the lead for a large project when in fact, I was. In my interview, I tried to give as much credit to the team as possible as I thought this would look good. Nope. My feedback was that they gave the role to the person with 'more experience in leading projects' when this person had led none, only pretended, and I had undersold myself.

I can see where you’re coming from OP. I don’t think the policy itself is discriminatory but if it’s invariably younger (cheaper?) candidates who are always appointed I can see how it might lead to concerns that it’s been applied in a discriminatory way.

In my industry older men tend to get most jobs. They almost have a club and if you are in any way different i.e younger female it will be very very difficult for you.

I agree that it is quite possibel to overvalue older candidates.

We had a woman near retirement who insisted that unless our invoices went out hand addressed with a first class stamp people would ignore them and not pay them.

We have an HR woman who you really think would know better about discrimination.

We have a programmer who has outdated design ideas and is out of touch with how users interact.

... not that we haven't had issues with the youngsters either!

I agree about experience. I have some great experience, but my last two years haven't contributed much new.

This is on the acas website but, unfortunately, no equivalent for older people where age discrimination is rife.

People often want young candidates as they have fewer obstacles (i.e.dependents - either kids or elderly parents) and are more likely to take shit.

I had one over 50 friend say he didn't get a job because he was too experienced. Read too old

I honestly think 1 year's experience five times would be impossible in my field. Maybe in the most junior jobs. Ive nominally been doing the same job for 6 years - there is approx a 50% variation in what I do year to year. It's never "the same job".

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

What an absolute load of tosh. I had just over 10 years experience in my previous career as a PA. There is no way that a younger PA was at the same level as me. I saw several of them get the boot because they weren't up to scratch and I used to groan inwardly when I thought about my younger self when I first started out on that journey. Experience does count.

I work in the NHS and the interview process is very different. Lots of older women and the management team is all older women with two men. It feels like a much safer and fairer place.

Also, the NHS advertise the salary range. There is no negotation. It's a level playing field for older and younger candidates. Not like businesses who advertise salaries as 'competitive', 'negotiable' or 'market rate'......... ugh! I don't miss all that bullshit one bit!

I honestly think 1 year's experience five times would be impossible in my field. Maybe in the most junior jobs. Ive nominally been doing the same job for 6 years - there is approx a 50% variation in what I do year to year. It's never "the same job".

In which case, what's the value today of your experience six years ago? People can't have it both ways. If their job stays the same, then it's the one year's experience ten times. If their job changes substantially, then the experience from ten years ago is of minimal value.

By and large, Formula 1 drivers win races (and championships) the first time they have a competitive car, or they never do. By and large, footballers perform at about the level they did in their first season at their first decent club. By and large, tennis and golf players who don't win a major event in their first few years as a professional never do. The best that can be said of experience is that it just about counteracts the decline in performance caused by age; it doesn't make them better.

There are exceptions to the above, but they are usually about journeymen who were never quite good enough but keep plugging away in the second tier, and have one incredibly lucky late-career alignment of form and other players' bad luck. Usually, if they haven't done well in the first couple of years, they're not going to.

Experience is over-rated.

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.

Well someone should change it, because it's illegal.

No thats not true at all Reflectant and Im puzzled as to why you think it would be. Why would experience from 6 years ago be defunct? If I have to repeat that element of the work again in 3 years, then it would be valuable.

My job is one where you pick up a wide range of skills over time. Then you use these in different and modified combinations year on year, adding and updating skills as the field changes year on year. Def a field where experience counts.

A policy of not asking for XX years experience is questionable at best. I'm sure it's perfectly fine in a basic admin role, but plenty of advanced, technical jobs (surgeon, pilot, engineer etc etc) require tens of thousands of hours of experience before professional competency is achieved (and maintained).

If someone (yes, more often than not, a woman) makes the decision to take a significant break from working, mid-career, there is no way that person can or should expect to return to work at the same level as colleagues who maintained their professional practice.

You may like to decry this as discriminatory, but that doesn't make it wrong. As another poster said, would you rather be operated on by someone with twenty years' continuous experience, or someone who's had ten years off, and only came back yesterday?

"You may like to decry this as discriminatory, but that doesn't make it wrong."

Discriminatory is wrong. Morally, commercially and legally.

Other than in the limited number of advanced technical jobs where a number of hours' need to be completed to achieve competence, how do you decide how many years' experience to put? If not putting an arbitrary number is 'questionable'?

Discriminatory is wrong. Morally, commercially and legally

No it isn't! Do you even know what discrimination means? Making a choice, based upon the recognition and understanding of difference is not 'wrong', just because some SJWs scream from the rooftops that it is.

I recruit and promote people based upon my and my and my colleagues' judgment of their experience and ability to profitably deliver a service to current and potential clients. We have to discriminate in order to do this. If they can't make us money, or they're incapable of performing effectively, I let them go. It's a business decision, and it's inherently discriminatory.

Other than in the limited number of advanced technical jobs where a number of hours' need to be completed to achieve competence, how do you decide how many years' experience to put? If not putting an arbitrary number is 'questionable'?

Of course setting a number is arbitrary. Professional bodies and Royal Colleges arbitrarily set numbers based on judgment, guesswork and a little evidence.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly expert at anything. Hence, advanced job roles requiring extensive experience before true competency is attained.

In which case, what's the value today of your experience six years ago? People can't have it both ways. If their job stays the same, then it's the one year's experience ten times. If their job changes substantially, then the experience from ten years ago is of minimal value.

Bullshit. Plenty of jobs are project-based and involve reusing many of the same skills, whilst also learning new ones. I've learnt plenty of techniques for dealing with different aspects of work over the last 6 years and it is exactly that variety of experience that I can now draw on that makes me better at my job than someone who hasn't built up the same breadth of experience.

On the other hand, sometimes experience can become a millstone if you do the same thing for too long, as you can't contemplate doing anything a different way.

And the comparison to athletes is pretty tenuous, as most of us aren't in jobs where you peak before the age of 30!

There's a reason you never see a CEO above the age of 30, if they were good enough they'd be there straight off without experience... oh wait

If I'm honest this surprises me. I used to work in an industry which is predominantly female. In the last 20 years of my career I experienced positive discrimination, not because of my long and diverse experience, but because I wouldn't be disappearing on maternity leave. There's a common belief that ageism only works one way. It doesn't.

In the last 20 years of my career I experienced positive discrimination, not because of my long and diverse experience, but because I wouldn't be disappearing on maternity leave

Looking forward to this! I’m already too old to have any more kids and the ones I have will be self sufficient (in terms of not needing childcare) in a few years so hopefully I’ll be seen as an asset!

According to Malcolm Gladwell, it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become truly expert at anything

It’s complete bollocks. No racing driver will do 10,000 hours in a competitive car. Very few pilots achieve 10000 hours in total in their career, never mind on a particular plane. A surgeon would be highly unlikely to spend 10000 hours with a scalpel in their hand in their career.

More fundamentally, Gladwell (in this, as so many other things) misquoted the research anyway. There’s a summary here:

www.inc.com/nick-skillicorn/the-10000-hour-rule-was-wrong-according-to-the-people-who-wrote-the-original-stu.html

"No it isn't! Do you even know what discrimination means? "

Yes thanks, and I'm sure if you weren't being obtuse, you would know that both the thread itself and I personally am referring to unlawful discrimination.

"Of course setting a number is arbitrary. Professional bodies and Royal Colleges arbitrarily set numbers based on judgment, guesswork and a little evidence."

Not going to answer the question? I'll repeat it for you. If you think it's 'questionable' not to set an arbitrary number, how would/do you decide how many years' experience you want to ask for? I didn't ask what professional bodies and Royal Colleges do, I asked what would you do, assuming it's not one of those very limited number of roles?

How many years sitting in an HR department do you think someone must have in order to achieve sufficient competence and experience to be a manager?