To think there's massive age discrimination after 50

[Livelifelaughter]

My company recently made redundant some extremely competent experienced lawyers. All the ones below the age of 50 (40s)have got new jobs. None over 50 have even though they would accept the salary on offer to the 40 year olds.
Some have approached firms asking to retrain in other areas of law at a lower salary and have got no where even though many firms will re train women who have left for years to have families.
It seems very difficult to get a decent well paid job at 50 plus.

"Too experienced" is a bullshit excuse, you are right. They deserve better. I think there will be two things at play here. If the rejections are pre-interview, the rationale is likely that pricing is put to clients in PQE bands (old fashioned but common) eg "we charge £500/hour for 4-6 PQE, £600 for 6-10" and in fact they need to staff their matters with people in the lower brackets in order to keep costs down. This could obviously be addressed by linking pricing to role (Associate/senior Associate/Legal Director) and simply offering the job at the appropriate level.

The other thing is, as you say, team dynamics. I can't personally see how the up and coming juniors would feel threatened if your colleagues were clear that partnership was not what they aspired to, and the firm also made it clear at recruitment that this was not a partnership track job. I know of juniors who work really effectively with time-served senior lawyers who have decided not to go for partnership. Done right, it frees up the young Turks to do more client relationship stuff, with a safe pair of hands back in the office to get the work done. And when those juniors do get made up, it is perfectly possible to have a workable hierarchy if everyone is sensible. My former trainee is now a partner with technical "authority" over me. I'm delighted to let him make commercial and strategic decisions that I could not be bothered with. He definitely comes to me for technical guidance, which I am happy to give, before I clock off at 5pm (I made the decision many years ago that time had more value to me than money).

Can't say I've noticed. My employer wants me to work until 70, I'm 60 now, as I have a wealth of experience.
BUT I work in the NHS and it's full of old people like me because young people don't want to do this job any more.

The ironic thing is that those people who are younger and who discriminate against older people are going to be older and will face the same kind of discrimination.

We can't change our age and we all get older.

Yes but they all think that they are going to be in positions of sufficient power where age does not matter. Bluntly, it's older people who are less successful who suffer, because organisations still have an outdated notion that seniority and age progress together in a linear way and they can't compute an older person in a more junior role. I mean, think about it, we even say senior and junior to describe roles, and those word carry age connotations with them.

My sis just puts a professional qualification she got in the mid 90s as her starting point, says they would assume she was 25 not 36 when she got it. Still working at 64!

Having O Levels dates you.

I've had no problem with being offered great jobs through my 50s - now early 60s, I've taken on two people in their 50s in the last month (and got rid of one in the same period, so no bias).

I read an article that suggested all dates are removed from a CV

Bonkers! mine has no DOB, school dates etc, and only 20ish years work experience in the interests of keeping it to two pages, but I received one the other day that had no dates for any of the job roles - I'm not someone to hawkishly search for gaps, etc, but that is essential to understanding the applicants experience,

I'm in a 'young' sector. My LinkedIn is full of 23yr olds saying they are highly experienced.

At late 30s I do already feel old, I'm the oldest in the global team that I manage. They're all late 20s, early 30s max.

Do I honestly think I will be working in this role (or a similar one) at 50? Hell no. There is no chance I'd be employed at 50 to manage a global team in my field. And honestly, it's really high pressure, I won't want to be doing this when I'm 50.

They don't know what they don't know.

They need to know about the Dunning - Kruger bias

www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/dunning-kruger-effect

I love seeing some example CVs where people rate their skills as 5 out of 5. How do they know what skilled actually looks like?

You might feel differently when you're in your 50s. I would have said the same at your age. I don't think you mean it to be but your comment is very ageist.

I know former colleagues have been told that they are "too experienced" meaning I suspect that their recruitment would upset the junior lawyers working towards partnership

And as I said above, that's exactly the thing I don't understand. A decent older lawyer who isn't interested in partnership is a safe pair of hands but no threat because they aren't going for partnership. It makes no sense for younger lawyers to be upset by it.

If you're not in a sector like education or a regulated sector - why are dates necessary? Although I can sort of see that you'd like to see roughly how long they were in a job. That said, I'd then argue their CV is no good anyway, because it's now about how long you worked at a place, it's what impact you made. Facts and figures over dates. As an example, I was told to say managed budget of £x rather than just managed budget for team.

@Renoir56

I really didn't mean to be ageist, apologies.

What I meant was that my job is totally full on at its peak. It's 16hr days, international travel, very high stress, low sleep, working weekends, constantly thinking about work. I personally physically and mentally couldn't do this for another 10yrs plus, I know my personal limits.

I'm sure other 50yr olds would be more than capable of doing this of course, but not me.

I've had panic attacks and I've been diagnosed with burn out previously due to this job. I've made changes to fix some issues, but I'm aware that for me it's for a few years more only.

I do want to carry on working, I'm planning a sideways move in a few years.

Just been filling in an NHS application. Wanted every job. Ever.And dates.

Seriously. That's a lot of jobs.

Haven't encountered it yet, but then Dh and I have both been in our current jobs for about 10 years. Fear what will happen if we need to move.

I am short, rotund, not white, there's no way I want to be adding over 50 to that negative tick list so I've doctored my cv/linkedin to remove the first few jobs and removed my graduation date.

As Pp said I've really taken against all the highlighting of the menopause, the last thing I need is senior white male hiring managers (and despite best efforts they all are), thinking I won't be able to cope because of hot flushes.

My plan is to move to slower more ploddy sectors away from the fast tech sector where hopefully being under 40 isn't as strong of a requirement.

I still worry that at some point I'll be out on my ear for just being too old. Trying to keep up with all the tech but at some point my face will betray me I guess.

@SaltyGod it's fine. I didn't actually think you were being deliberately ageist. I just know that I thought something similar so could relate to it. By my late 40s I wanted to do something different that got me off the corporate treadmill so I changed careers. I was perfectly capable of doing my previous job but I didn't want to do it so i retrained. I'm now self employed and earn half of what I used to but I love it.

I was made redundant at 57, i was told quite firmly at the Job Centre that unless i want to do caring, driving or start my own business, highly unlikely i would ever work again

She said that placing people over 50 was "problematic"

So i looked at my pensions and redundancy money and thought "retirement" :)

55 is the new 65

Lol quite!!!

@lieselotte - it kind of matters whether someone has done a role for a couple of months or a couple of years as to how much experience they'd have got from it.
I was actually looking for interim cover, so someone that had a mix of short and longer term roles was really what I was looking for.
There's such a shortage of candidates at the moment that I ended up cross referencing the CV to the linkedin profile - but in a better market, the CV wouldn't have got a second glance.

Definitely true. And all the research shows women are affected by age discrimination at a younger age than men. I am late 40s and it took me two years to get a new job, got knocked back from job after job I’d have been offered when I was in my 20s and 30s.

i can’t tell you how relieved I was to finally be offered a job! I had got to the point when I really thought that was it for me and I’d never get a bloody job again!

But young people love about a lot in their career! It’s easier to get a job so it’s easy for them to move! And they want to move to the next opportunity!

Any CVS I have seen recently have no dates for anything so it is impossible to tell how old someone is exactly.