# It is never too late — the short-sightedness of ageist employers - **Episode:** [187](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/187.md) (2025-04-10) - **Type:** interview - **Tags:** ageism, recruitment, organizational-psychology - **Time:** 11:34–19:15 (start 694s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/187?t=694](https://truthliesandwork.com/187?t=694) --- [11:34] Leanne Elliott: I'm with you. It's, it's what I work in recruitment as a as an organizational psychologist and the candidate experience is something that I'm constantly having to talk to organizations about, about how important it is. These things are slipping and changing. And I'm curious in terms of the over 50s that you work with, what are the shifts in recruitment and hiring practices are they also struggling with that aren't what they were used to perhaps when they started to join the workforce? [12:01] John Tarnoff: I think there is a sense of overwhelm for people who have been In one job or just a few jobs for the last 20 years. People who have been, let's say they've been working for the last 10 years in a job. And I see this a lot, and you can see this when you look at the LinkedIn profile. They will, there will be a few jobs at the beginning, then there will be maybe one long job, then a second long job. Then usually about 5 or 10 years ago, that job ended and you see a series of shorter jobs in the interim. And then there is now a gap, 3 months, 6 months longer. I see this repeatedly as a pattern. And what's going on is that The methodologies that people have used to go into this succession of jobs is failing. One of the persistent reflections I get from people I work with in their 50s is, I've never had so much trouble getting a job. It never used to be like this. Either someone would approach me or I would, if I would, if I was laid off, it would take me a few weeks to Kind of get settled to find a thread of another, another position, multiple positions. People would interview me and I would, within a month or 2, I'd have something else. What's going on? [13:37] Leanne Elliott: Is it a case that for some people at this stage, it's just too late to reinvent their career, too late to jump into another job so easily, or is there something else going on? [13:48] John Tarnoff: It is never too late. When people, and this is the advice, I use the term advisedly, that is given to many people. It's like, oh, oh, you're over. It's over. You're never going to get another job. You're 53. Oh, you're done. You're done. Just, you know, figure something else out. Retire early. Take what you got and go. That message gets louder and more strident as people get closer to 60 [14:19] Leanne Elliott: Yeah [14:20] John Tarnoff: And this advice that you should just pack it in is toxic. It's really bad advice and it is mean-spirited and it is inaccurate. So yes, that's part of what's going wrong with the culture. What's gone wrong with the culture is this expectation that people are going to retire. In the boomer generation, there has been this statistical marker where something like 10,000 boomers in the U.S. are hitting 65 every day in this, this cohort from 1946 to 1964. And I'm, I often see that statistic. Characterized as 10,000 boomers a day are retiring, which is inaccurate. Just because they hit 65 doesn't mean that they are retiring. But this association between age 65 and retirement is so embedded in our culture that writers don't even understand that they're making a biased assertion. When in fact, the largest, the fastest growing element of the US workforce is over 60. There are fewer people being born in the younger generations, fewer people available to enter the workforce. So we used to have this pyramid, right, where it was thinner at the top. People were retiring and dying off, and there are a lot of people coming up. To replace them. That graph looks more like a cylinder today, where you have equal numbers of people in the workforce at all these ages. So companies are not going to have as easy, easy a time replacing the experienced older workers at the top with a multitude of candidates coming up from the bottom. So something's got to change around that. And I believe what needs to change is that employers need to think about a multi-generational workforce, not a stratified workforce, because older people and younger people can work extremely well, do work extremely well together, and are addressing different problems. Younger people typically will bring energy, innovation, fresh ways of thinking. Older workers will bring wisdom, experience, insight, and strategy. Working together, that's an unbeatable combination to address the massive economic challenges of disrupted supply chains, business models, AI, everything that's coming down the pike. We need all hands on deck [17:24] Leanne Elliott: Is it short-sighted of organizations as well though? Because you said like once you hit— people are hitting 50, they're starting to, to feel these struggles. We know that as, as humans, we're getting healthier, we're going to live longer, probably gonna, you know, the Gen Z are probably gonna live to, to 90, 100 on average. If we're retiring at 65 and written off at 50, that's half of our life. That we're saying isn't workable [17:52] John Tarnoff: Not only is it shortsighted on the employer part, but what I'm seeing more on the candidate side is people thinking, oh my God, do I want to spend— well, if you, if you're going to retire in your early 60s, number one, what are you going to do to 90 that's meaningful and purposeful? And how are you going to afford it? Right? I mean, most people do not have enough money saved For a retirement that does not factor in inflation. But when you put inflation into the mix, plus all of the, I mean, look at the crazy volatility that we're experiencing right now. You need more than a savings account. You need more than a pension. You need more than a fixed figure that you're trying to either grow a little bit or draw from a little bit. to keep you going. You need to be working as long as possible, as long as you're healthy enough to work and able mentally to work in order to be able to sustain and survive a 30-year retirement or a 30-year, you know, additional longevity [18:57] Leanne Elliott: And you mentioned in terms of potential people over 50 getting this feedback that you're done, now's the time to slow down, a clear sign of ageism. Are there any other signs of ageism that people might experience Either looking for work or in an organization?