What the hell?
I have been working with an Executive who is seeking a new opportunity. He has had an extremely successful career both as a CEO and CFO and now in the twilight years of his career is seeking a new opportunity.
As we all know Age Discrimination is illegal in the UK – in fact, all discrimination is illegal. You can imagine my horror when he fed back to me words from a senior recruiter, who works for a very well-known and respected Head-hunter and global specialist recruitment consultancy. Her words of wisdom were as follows:
Age Discrimination is absolutely everything in recruitment at the moment and he had no chance of getting employed. Oh, and nothing happens between now and the end of August as everyone is on leave anyway.
Whilst feeding this back to me, the Executive I am working with described the words and tone as “real wrist-cutting stuff.” Shall we talk Mental Health and the damage that words can do, especially by someone who should know better?
Luckily, the gentleman is of sound mind and has, like all of us, had setbacks and challenges in his career so although shocked was able to take it on the chin. He did acknowledge, however, that he was becoming quite depressed by the lack of interest from the Head-hunting community.
In my opinion, this is NOT okay or acceptable! If a client of a Head-hunter expresses discriminatory requests, the answer as I was taught and live by is” We will find the best candidate for the job, that match the skills required!” Not, in anyway, facilitate ageism or any other discrimination.
Age is just a number, the retirement age in the UK is currently 66 but there is nothing and should be nothing to stop people who want to work to continue to do so for as long as they are willing and able. How dare anyone tell anyone otherwise? The government does not care as long as they get their share in the form of taxes.
As this particular head-hunter was a Senior Consultant, one would have expected better. If that is her view, it is possibly being fed to the junior consultants and rookies, so what chance is there for any experienced Senior Executive candidates? What happened to training and educating staff and Clients?
Finally, what is this statement “that between June until September recruitment grinds to a halt as everyone is on leave”? What tosh; yes, there will be holidays taken during this period, but the world does not stop turning, business keeps on going and I am damned sure that if a company is looking to hire an Executive then no matter what time of the year they will go ahead.
I am furious on behalf of all candidates that have had similar experiences, it is not acceptable!
It will be interesting to see how many of our most experienced Executives have been subjected to ageism either when applying for jobs or in the workplace.