Why 50+ ers Can't get re-employed

Employers' reasons for favouring younger workers over older workers are often inaccurate but are commonplace in the marketplace: Older workers have more experience and have a historic timeline to use as a salary touchstone.

Therefore, they will request or command higher salaries that smaller organisation are reluctant to pay.

The healthcare overheads, by way of time off sick and possibly health care costs can be higher than younger workers'.

Some employers or hiring personnel, mainly younger staff, view older workers in the same way as their parents i.e. dominant and stubborn, stuck in their ways.

They may also view older workers' current skills or attitudes, as outdated or not completely aligned with what they want. Something that can be easily overcome by training.

We do not condone age, or other discriminatory bias and you will hear very few HR and personnel departments admitting it exists in their organisation.

Clearly, all the reasons employers trot out to not hire older workers are superficially flawed, ridiculous and /or short-sighted. Unfortunately, ageism is real and it is preventing older job seekers from landing jobs in an already fickle, and hyper competitive job market.

It is also reducing the effectiveness and depth of skills available to smaller companies, rendering them less able to compete in tight market conditions.

Good managers can always assess, align and harmonise the views of their staff and by treating them as individuals, they can balance their strengths and weaknesses, to the benefit of their organisations. From this, you can surmise that any form of discrimination is an indication of poor management skills, lazy and short-sighted thinking.

Beautiful women face discrimination in certain jobs, study finds

While many see no downside to being beautiful, a professor at the University of Colorado Denver Business School says attractive women face discrimination when it comes to landing certain kinds of jobs.

In a study released in the May/June Journal of Social Psychology, Stefanie Johnson, assistant professor of management at UC Denver Business School, found that beauty has an ugly side, at least for women.

Attractive women were discriminated against when applying for jobs considered "masculine" and for which appearance was not seen as important to the job. Such positions included job titles like manager of research and development, director of finance, mechanical engineer and construction supervisor.

"In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women," said Johnson. "In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn't the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender."

The study, co-authored by Robert Dipboye, professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida, Kenneth Podratz, an organizational development manager at UPS and Ellie Gibbons, research assistant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, found that attractive men suffered no similar discrimination and were always at an advantage.

According to Johnson, beautiful people still enjoy a significant edge. They tend to get higher salaries, better performance evaluations, higher levels of admission to college, better voter ratings when running for public office and more favorable judgments in trials.

A recent Newsweek survey of 202 hiring managers and 964 members of the public concluded that looks matter in every aspect of the workplace and they mattered more for women. When asked to rate nine character attributes on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the most important, looks ranked third, above education and sense of humor, the magazine reported.

But in one narrow aspect of life, beauty can be a hindrance, something researchers have called the "beauty is beastly" effect.

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