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The Case For Hiring Older Workers
Some good news for older employees - and for the companies who hire them.
The demographics of the workforce are such that:
- More people are turning 40 this year than ever before
- The Census Bureau reports that the number of people over 50 has
increased by 12 million, whereas the number of people in the 20-34 age group has declined by 6 million
- By the year 2010, the number of people over 50 will increase by another 21 million
There is clearly an increase in older workers and a decrease in younger workers. Older workers can bring a great deal of value to a company. Studies have demonstrated that older workers can bring expertise, maturity, and good contacts to an employer. Highlights of a recent AARP study included the fact that "older workers were perceived as having all but one of the top seven qualities rated from a list of 29 that companies considered most desirable in an employee, including loyalty, dedication to the company, and commitment to doing quality work."
Employers who have policies and practices to attract and retain older workers will be ahead of the curve as the "Baby Boom" generation continues to age.
Tech-Heavy Silicon Valley Looks To the Over-50 Set for Expertise
By Phred Dvorak
At age 64, Jack Geisen thought his working life was over. The Silicon Valley-based software specialist had been rebuffed at job interview after job interview early last year, when he tried to re-enter the work force a few years after retiring from Lockheed Martin Corp.
Discouraged, Mr. Geisen sold his home in Los Altos, Calif., and bought a place in a retirement community a few hours' drive north. Then, in June, he got a surprise recruitment call from Tibco Software Inc., a business-software maker attracted by his years of experience managing projects at a big company.
"They really pursued me like you wouldn't believe," says Mr. Geisen, who struck a deal with Tibco that lets him work part of the time from home. "I think I was exactly what they were looking for."
Mr. Geisen's story highlights what some recruiters say is a budding trend in America's high-tech capital: Silicon Valley -- long famous for young, hard-driving engineers and brash entrepreneurs -- is becoming friendlier to over-50 workers. The shift stands out all the more because during the Internet-start-up frenzy of the late 1990s, many older technical workers complained they couldn't find work in a region with virtually no unemployment.
"During the dot-com boom, youth was in," says Valerie Frederickson, a Silicon Valley recruiter who specializes in placing human-resource executives in area firms. Now, "if anything, our clients want older rather than younger."
Ms. Frederickson estimates that 18 of the past 25 people her company has placed were older than 50, and that she is now finding jobs for more than twice as many over-50 applicants as she was 12 months ago.
The easing job climate for older workers in one of the country's most notoriously youth-hungry regions comes as the U.S. work force as a whole gets grayer. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says workers 55 and older accounted for 16.9% of the employed in January, up from 12.2% in January 1996.
Companies are expected to become even more reliant on older workers in the years to come. America's baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, begin turning 60 this year and will soon start retiring. But demographic trend trackers say there won't be enough younger workers to replace them. That means more companies will face staff shortages unless they can persuade some older employees to put off retirement and stay on the payroll.
To be sure, high-tech remains one of the hardest industries for the over-50 crowd, since it is often assumed that older workers will have trouble keeping up with the frenetic pace of technological development. There is little solid data on how many older workers there are in Silicon Valley, which has a particularly high concentration of technology firms, from Google Inc. to National Semiconductor Corp. Plenty of northern California recruiters and job-placement specialists still report that older workers find it much harder to keep or find work than their younger peers.
"The feeling around tech jobs is that you have to have a sharp mind and put in long hours," says Mike Curran, director of a publicly funded job-training and placement program based in Silicon Valley. "There's a perception that the older you get, the less able you are to run the race."
Mr. Curran says he hasn't seen much increase in hiring of older workers in large technology companies, but that there has been job growth in smaller companies seeking employees with more experience.
To the extent that Silicon Valley's tech companies are taking a harder look at older job applicants, recruiters say they are being prodded by a tighter job market. Some recruiters say a recent surge in hiring at big companies like Google is absorbing talent, making smaller companies hungry for skilled workers of any age.
Other recruiters say that, although Silicon Valley companies would still prefer to hire workers in their 30s or 40s, many of those people left the industry or the state when the tech-investment bubble collapsed in the early 2000s, eliminating more than 200,000 jobs in the region.
Some labor-trackers also say the failure of many 1990s-era Internet start-ups has given employers more appreciation for the steadiness and wisdom that comes with age.
At Santa Clara, Calif., wireless-networking start-up Stoke Inc., Chief Executive Randall Kruep estimates the bulk of his employees are between 35 and 45, and a good 17% are over 50. Mr. Kruep says the job applicants he sees these days are "a little more seasoned than they used to be." But Mr. Kruep, who is 45, says the older workers often bring a maturity and well-rounded set of skills that his little company of 70 people needs as it deals with the ups and downs of a new business.
"It seems like the right people are a little older," Mr. Kruep says. "They don't get rattled
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