Ask anyone sitting in the hiring seat if younger women get preferential treatment over older women, and the answer will almost always be “no, never.” But is it a fib? And is it possible hiring managers give preference without even thinking about it?
To get the answers, consider a study published by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research. Researchers applied to entry-level jobs in Boston and St. Petersburg, Fla., by sending out 4,000 résumés posing as a female job applicant with the same skills and education; the résumés varied the year of high school graduation, which dated the job seeker as being from 35 to 62. Here’s what happened:
— The women whose age on the application appeared to be closer to 35 were 40 percent more likely to receive an offer of a job interview than women over 50.
— On average, the woman applicants whose age appeared to be over 50 had to send out 27 résumés just to get one job interview; younger woman had to send in only 19 résumés to land an interview.
Interesting, too, is that many hiring managers said they thought older women in general were dependable, capable workers.
How to avoid trouble
It’s likely that a lot of preferential treatment is unintentional – few managers start out their day saying, “I’m going to discriminate against hiring older women.”
But you can lessen, if not eliminate, the possibility of inadvertent discrimination by:
— Eradicating any application information that might lead to assumptions about age, and
— Getting people of all ages involved in the hiring process, to get a multigenerational take on an applicant’s fitness for the job.