A question often raised is whether age discrimination about job opportunities is real, or perceived.  There are many opinions, yet few facts.  A recent CNBC article provides more facts than most conversations on the sensitive topic, and claims discrimination happens in various ways.

It leads off with “Older Americans struggling to overcome age discrimination while looking for work face a new enemy: their computers.”  More people need to work longer, and more people want to work longer, so this is a growing issue. 

The  CNBC article points out some positives.  “Online job-hunting tools should be making things easier for older employment seekers, and it can. Indeed.com, which claims to list 16 million jobs worldwide, currently lists 158,000 openings under its “Part Time Jobs, Senior Citizen Jobs” category. Monster.com, which claims 5 million listings, has a special home page for “Careers at 50+.””

It goes on to say “In other ways, however, online job sites can cut older workers out. Age bias is built right into their software, according to Madigan. Job seekers who try to build a profile or resume can find that it’s impossible to complete some forms because drop-down menus needed to complete tasks don’t go back far enough to let older applicants fill them out. For example, one site’s menu options for “years attended college” stops abruptly at 1956. That could prevent someone in their late 70s from filling out the form.”

The full article can be found at:

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/online-job-sites-may-block-older-workers.html

We have several potentially controversial points of view:

1. Very few people land jobs via job sites, so even if true the effect is limited
2. There are some fields (e.g. Marketing) where age discrimination does seem real and pronounced
3. Those wishing to continue working in leadership roles in their sixties and beyond need to have a strategy for pivoting to roles that value silver savvy experience over youth.

What are your thoughts?

– Jim Deupree

Given a chance recently to read Popular Science cover to cover, this becomes a really good question, for virtually everyone, not just early adopters, or technology types.  In my newly aware opinion, there are three strong reasons for reading Popular Science that apply to virtually everyone in leadership roles.  One gains:

1. Information about personal health and handy breakthroughs that are real now
2. Knowledge about business trends and discoveries that provide ideas for new business lines and services
3. Everyone needs to network and a single issue provides months worth of discussion material

To illustrate these points, here are some highlights from the September 2015 edition.  Included:

• How a robot will soon deliver things to your hotel room, then take a selfie with you
• New IBM Chef Watson app that lets you pick several ingredients, then designs a creative menu for you
• IWorkx leaf blower that is far more powerful, yet very light
• Your history in a drop of blood — how Harvard has enabled the ability to discern your entire life history of viruses, so that you can figure out what vaccinations need boosting and better target how to attack other health issues
• Uber Powerful — Their journey to creating driverless cars so that Uber is always cheaper than owning a car
• Zip Line Designer — Chapter two for an airline pilot, who is using his navigational skills to design zip line courses that minimize the damage to forests
• Do those guys with metal detectors ever find treasure?  Always wondered about that.
• Will practicing a skill in your head make you better at it?

Popular Science, in the old fashioned print format, is very inexpensive.  Print is best way to read it, in my opinion, because you discover even more as you leaf through it.  Give it a shot.  I always have some around if you would like to give one a test drive.

– Jim Deupree

I have been watching LinkedIn steadily gain traction, wanting to make sure that I could accurately advise our Clients and friends about whether and how they should use LinkedIn.  Patricia Romboletti (a fellow CEO Netweaver who goes all over the country doing LinkedIn seminars and is also in the Executive Search field) recently shared a very unique perspective on how and why she uses LinkedIn, providing a way to more easily implement our Pay-It-Forward philosophy.

Pat, like many of us, has a healthy network.  The challenge is how to stay in touch with them in a way they value.  So once a week Pat spends just a few minutes looking through her LinkedIn connections to find opportunities to connect her network with each other.  Perhaps it is following up on an announcement that someone has a new position,  and offering a potentially helpful new connection for them.  The search powers of LinkedIn are pretty amazing — and make the task easy.  As part of the process she naturally looks at the profiles of those who pop up, which refreshes her awareness of what they are doing and how she can help them.

Once she has found opportunities to connect people with each other she does not use Inmail.  She calls them, or sends them a regular email.  You might wonder how she has all of their phone numbers.  Sometimes she doesn’t, but LinkedIn usually has their company and the company has a switchboard as the starting point.  When the only purpose of the call is to help the person they always appreciate it — and it frequently leads to “we should get together to catch up” coming from the recipient.

Pat also had a great answer to the “which connections do I accept” question.  Imagine yourself at a cocktail party or business function.  You meet ten new people, some of whom automatically exchange cards.  Do you keep all of those cards, and do something with them?  You may follow-up with one or two, and put a few more in a box only to forget why you even have them.  If someone invites Pat to connect that she does not recognize but finds of interest she calls them (using the switchboard approach).  The initial conversation might be something like “I am honored by your interest, and wanted to learn more about you”.  Then you either know more about them and make them one of your “investment” connections, or you ignore their request to connect just as you would ignore their card.

One other valuable tip was make your Summary in your profile a story, not a resume.  People go to LinkedIn to learn more about you.  An interesting story which reveals insights about you is more likely to get read, and to be remembered.

You can learn more about Pat and her work at www.sageexecutivesearch.com

– Jim Deupree