Interesting to see the report below. Many employers are now finding it difficult to recruit and job vacancies are reported to be standing at very high levels. However the perception from candidates that they have been less favourably treated because of negative and discriminatory stereotyping on the basis of age, or any other characteristic protected from discrimination for that matter, has long been a concern for employers.
Some larger employers will strip applications of all such information before candidates are selected for interview, but many employers lack the size or resources to do this, and it is not always practical to give individualised feedback to applications received, resulting in a bland “sorry you have not been successful this time” or no feedback at all. Some employers say in their job adverts words to the effect that they will not respond to all applications, and candidates who do not hear should just assume their application has been unsuccessful.
Whatever the process, all employers should retain sufficient information for an appropriate period to be able to explain to a candidate who challenges their rejection why their perception of why this is, may differ from the reality.
A report by Legal and General Retail Retirement and the Centre for Economics and Business Research has found that 52% of surveyed job seekers over the age of 50 believed their age made employers less likely to hire them. The survey of 2,000 over-50s in the UK found that perceptions that they were too overqualified, too close to retirement age, more expensive to hire, or a perceived or actual generational skills gap made employers less likely to invite them to interview or hire them. The percentage of people who felt their age put them at a disadvantage in securing a new role increased from 46% of those aged between 50 and 59 to 64% for those between 60 and 69.
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