A few months ago, I discovered that a friend, who is just a little younger than me, and I had both applied for the same job. It was the kind of thing we could have done equally well, because our resumes are similar and we both ticked all the boxes in the recruitment advertisement. I won’t say that I’d have been delighted for him to get the job over me, but I wouldn’t have been shocked or inconsolable.
In any case, it never came to that. Neither of us got a response to our application, let alone an interview.
The interesting thing is that this was an editing job for a website aimed at people over 60. I don’t know who did get the job, but a Google search a few months later revealed some information about the company and included pictures of its managers, who all seemed to be in their late twenties or early thirties.
Now, I’m not saying that young people shouldn’t be running a business aimed at people twice or three times their age. But I am saying that it doesn’t show a lot of faith in your core audience if people who are very nearly in your target demographic — and, arguably, across the relevant issues — can’t even get the courtesy of a response to a job advertisement.
And if there’s one thing I can tell them for free about people over (or even approaching) 60, it’s that they like people to be polite.
This article was also posted on LinkedIn.
Just Rude…