
Forget Millennials–Why You Should Hire Someone Over 55 - mwielbut
http://www.fastcompany.com/3058869/forget-millennials-why-you-should-hire-someone-over-55
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HoopleHead
Gross generalisation. But, hey —I'm a lot nearer to 55 than I am to 25. So
what the hell!

Older people "learn" stuff.

Younger people "access" information

SOURCE: Nearly two decades in university teaching.

When I started out, you'd explain something and students would make notes.
You'd rarely be asked to explain that "thing" again.

Latterly, I found it almost impossible to convince students to take notes and
they'd often ask to be shown how to do the same thing on multiple occasions
—often on the same day.

My theory is that; with smartphones, Google, Wikipedia, etc. the youth of
today are conditioned to being able to access any information, any time, at
the tap of a screen. There is no incentive or need to make the effort to
retain that information, as it's always there. And they expect their college
lecturers to perform a similar 'on-tap' role.

Conversely, for us oldies, we might have learned stuff from a book which we'd
borrowed from the library and had to return, or a TV programme which had
dissipated into the aether. Sources which were not permanently with us. So we
had to make the effort to retain that knowledge, because accessing it again
was more hassle than remembering it.

I sometimes think it ironic that the classic SciFi utopian vision of a future
where everyone in the human race has access to the combined knowledge of all
mankind is almost upon us —and yet seems to have resulted in a population
where the average individual knows less and less.

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cafard
Yes, well... I was in college 40 years, I was back to get a more useful
credential 20 years ago, and I saw plenty of students write down stuff that
wasn't so, and which they should have known wasn't. My college French teacher
ca. 1975 complained that her students seemed to keep their knowledge in walled
off compartments, and from what I can see that happens still among many of the
cohort.

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PebblesHD
> forget X, hire Y

Why not forget hiring based on age and hire someone who fits well with your
team and has either the skills you need or the aptitude and attitude to learn
them

~~~
DKnoll
Sounds reasonable... but how am I going to write an inciteful blog article
about that?

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tswartz
This article has some interesting stats.

The last sentence of this excerpt is bizarrely added on.

>While some employers worry that older workers aren’t adept in tech tools or
platforms, that’s more related to the individual than the age, Griffin says.
She recently told a millennial job candidate to update his LinkedIn profile.

~~~
Joof
I'm not a fan of LinkedIn. People have 'verified' that I have tons of skills
that they have no idea whether or not I actually have.

I've also found that plenty of people my age (25) dislike it for various
reasons.

Maybe the problem is that the older guys have all been forced into management
paths and have been working on nontechnical skills. I really like the valve
idea that management is a skill, not a career path.

~~~
bigiain
FWIW plenty of people my age (almost 50) dislike it as well (possibly not for
the exact same reasons, but still...)

~~~
Joof
I'm also not a social network fan. Why have my entire work history public? Or
want recruiters to have 24/7 access to me when I'm not looking for work.

There are lots of reasons not to bother with linked-in.

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rmason
Isn't it all about finding 'A' players who can excel? So why discriminate
against over 55's? There's a lot less competition for them ;<).

~~~
greenyoda
_" Isn't it all about finding 'A' players who can excel?"_

It would be nice if that were true, but there are other factors at play in
many jobs. For example, because I'm over 55 and know about the harsh realities
of the business world, you'd have a hard time convincing me that I should work
80-hour weeks because your company is going to change the world and I'll get
rich on my stock options.

