World’s greatest pool of untapped talent wasted
The other day a lady who got my free stuff on how to get a job said how hard she found it, as she is in her ’50’s.
I was reminded of this when this morning I was talking to my Australian partner, Malcolm, as it looks like I’ll finally be going there in October, sponsors willing.
I learned how the Chinese are extracting more than minerals from Australia. They are extracting talent.
He told me about a guy we both know who was repeatedly told (after trying and failing with 162 job applications) “you’re too experienced for the job”.
This is HR code for you’re too old but we daren’t say so for fear of being done for discrimination.
Well, this man is bloody good. I know it because he is one of the main people who helped Toyota overtake Holden as the Number one car brand in Oz.
So now he is working in China on Mercedes and Volkswagen.
I know another lady who was perhaps the best executive I ever worked with when I handled American Express. Too old.
I could never get a job in a million years. Too experienced. Verdi who wrote his greatest opera – Othello – aged 80 wouldn’t get a job with the town brass band today. Elmore Leonard, 86, probably the world’s best crime writer would never get a publisher.
Come to think of it, my best-ever P. A., Daphne, might never have got a job. She only applied because my ad said I didn’t give a hoot about age, creed, colour or sex. And David Ogilvy once remarked that he’d never get at job at Ogilvy and Mather.
The world is awash with semi-literate 23 year olds who haven’t a clue turning down 50 year-olds who have far more to offer.
Crazy
Too bloody true, Drayton. Although still a youngster (I’ll be 62 next month) I’ve given up on trying to get a job. In any case, everyone knows that J-O-B stands for “Just Over Broke”. And who wants to work their backside off to put money in someone else’s pocket, unless they’re getting handsomely rewarded at the same time?
And as for going back into classroom teaching … well, don’t get me started on that!
Yes it’s sad but true, Drayton. There’s definitely age discrimination going on, especially with today’s glut of jobless. It’s an “employer’s” market, and they can be as choosy as they like! People are beating each other over the head for marketing jobs, so how does a 50-something-year-old compete with a 20-something-year-old who will work for peanuts? T’aint easy. It takes years to “grow” a marketing brain, yet it can be next to impossible to leverage your experience against youth, especially when the hiring managers are also “semi-literate 20-somethings who haven’t a clue.”
Nuts
I don’t who said it – but it certainly applies here:
“Youth is a terrible thing to waste on young people”.
Spot On, Drayton (sadly)
You know, if you don’t start realising that a level of unemployment is government policy, you’re just going to sound like a load of grumpy old men taking about powdered egg and the first time you saw an orange. You need to join forces with these semi-illiterate twenty-somethings, there are fewer than you think. I don’t think the folk in China will be earning as much as the young lads of which you speak.
As you are so interested in correct writing, Eleanor, the phrase is “semi-literate”.
By the way, although I yield to few in my contempt for this government’s ineptitude, no politician no matter how stupid thinks unemployment a good idea. It was, perhaps, when only property owners had votes – but that is over 120 years ago when I was young.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdZp5iw-UEo
No idea who he was; and as he says “I’m not sure whether I believe this.”