Seek and you shall find age prejudice

It had to do with money. The client wanted young people. The client wanted ‘graduates’. The client wanted attractive young women with sales experience - they didn’t want me reading them chapter and verse about THE LAW. Yet it was the recruitment agency that wrote the advertisement.

I always gave intractable recruiters 10 seconds to think about the brand ramifications to their business and that of the client before I rang the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. I discussed calmly the potential for some nasty and negative publicity. I had no compunction about ‘shopping’ them to the law.

What did surprise me was that the staff at Seek were not greatly interested in amending or removing advertisements that were blatantly ageist. While they were open to receiving complaints, they did not feel bound to do anything about them.

I also thought it strange that when the Australian Government sought quotes to advertise its Experience+suite of programs to help older Australians stay in the workforce or find a job – a matter of national interest - Seek refused to run them stating that the training component was potentially in competition with services provided by Seek Education (Think: Education Group).

This is unusual as Professor Denise Bradley is a non-executive director of Seek and she has a strong background in equity and social justice.

How important is a job? I’m not talking about a career. Just a job. A job that pays the bills, feeds the kids, pays the rent, puts petrol in the car and keeps the wolf from the door. How important is dignity or self-respect? Everyone deserves that. It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 65.

Young people know this. You’re fresh out of school, TAFE or university and you want a job. Any job. But the recruiter or employer says you’ve got to have experience. You need employment history – at 17? How can you get work experience when you’ve been sitting at a desk learning differential equations and the works of Tim Winton for the last five years?

It’s time for the recruitment industry to get real. It’s time for jobs boards such as Seek to have a quiet chat with their clients who place advertisements on their boards that are ageist and which may contravene the Age Discrimination Act.

If they don’t, it’s time for 5.7 million baby boomers to call the recruiters personally. Everyday.