Your recent article on skilled Georgia workers being in demand was most interesting and well done, but one critical piece of the story was missing. Having been laid off in a thinning of senior employees from an engineering position almost two years ago, I was quickly introduced to a very harsh and increasingly prevalent reality.
My first lesson was from a retired human resources manager-friend who reviewed my resume and suggested that I remove my first 20 years of experience and eliminate some of the revealing dates. Suddenly, the phone began ringing, and I found the response rate to my job applications (I stopped counting at 250) immediately went from zero to nearly 100 percent. Suddenly, I was “in demand.”
But learned a most disturbing thing on countless interviews thereafter. Quite often between my house and the previously enthusiastic potential employer’s offices, jobs mysteriously either became filled or had been eliminated. From those that actually feigned interest in me.
I learned how many ways the uncomfortable and illegal question of employment doom can be asked. My personal favorite was, “When did you graduate from college?” My response of “when I was 20, 22, and again when I was 27,” appeared to fall short of the answer, which would have included specific dates they were obviously looking for.
My honest answer to another popular question of my intent to work at least 20 more years was always met with long, silent, quizzical stares. Along the tortuous interview path, I learned that a former boss of mine had been one of the hiring managers I had interviewed with, and he had been instructed to hire only 20-somethings. Another hiring manager had joked with me on the phone screening that he would never hire anyone “with an extra hole or a tattoo.” My small shoulder tattoo was not visible during the interview, but I suspect he has now added age as another hiring exclusion.
Yes, experienced and qualified engineers (and those in countless other fields) are in increasing demand, but in this recent journey, I have become acquainted with dozens of incredibly capable people, willing and able to outperform anyone out there, but prevented from doing so merely by their excess of experience. There is no way to quantify the damage being done to our economy and society by any form of blind prejudice. Worst of all, unlike all other forms of discrimination, eventually we will all be subject to ageism.
On the bright side, my wife and I are starting a business of our own, and we will exclude no one, particularly the best and the brightest, from their participation and contributions.
