The U.K's employment law on ageism was announced recently.
Does this herald new change and hope to the fortunes of the over-forties jobseeker, or is this yet another sham law adding further torment to the forgotten generation?

Here, Keith Palmer, a 51-year old job seeker tells us his story...

The Patience of Job...
The machinations of an ageist world of jobseekers

Nine years have passed since my last serious employment.
Having enjoyed a long and eventful career in the City, where extensive overseas travel, a frenetic, almost maniacal atmosphere, and a reasonable-to-above average salary were the norm, I thought my job-applying days had been consigned to my computers' 'deleted' file.

I resigned from the 'Square mile' of my own volition, after months of protracted soul-searching and nightly questioning of my life and the demons that lurked within. Our working days lay witness to a procession of pay cuts and cut-backs, so in essence, our employers had redrawn the important dividing line for those seeking a commuterless life. In short, I walked with few conscious regrets.

Now, nearly a decade later, I feel the need to return to work, with further books to publish, [my first was launched a year ago] and bills to pay, life has not yet ended; although in the eyes of the recruiters, it finished nigh on a decade ago.

So what did I find at the ripe old age of Fifty-one, and what could life throw up after that recent fifteen minutes of fame?

From the recruitment pages of the local rag smiled a half dozen, sharp-looking twenty-something's, with suits and images to match.
Posting eight CV's, with explanatory covering letters, I confidently sat back to count the replies. Six ignored me, one informed that I'd been 'placed on file and would be contacted if anything suited my profile'. They didn't. While the last one sheepishly called to ask what a broker did for a living, and hasn't called since. A lot of time and effort wasted, and confirmation that they really didn't have much of a clue. Intermittently, I thought the hole in our letter box had healed up, and these were the reactions of people with a common claim to 'being different from the pack'.

More correspondence followed with the success of the Dutch mountaineering team, although the project was now looking a million times steeper. Well, it worked once before, so here goes again, blitzing the recruitment world in search of that elusive job...
In truth, I found a high impregnable wall. A wall of technology devised to protect those who refuse to ring back; a wall of unanswered e-mails, voice mails and 'lost' texts, put in place to guard the 'busy' and disinterested, and the downright dismissive.
Was it now time to change my charm offensive, to admit defeat in favour of attracting an admiring entrepreneur; or was it the aftershave, and my best friend hadn't told me something I should have known?

One helpful soul, [and very nearly, the only honest, helpful soul I met] informed that it was my CV. I'd apparently given the impression of being entrepreneurial and would 'jump ship' at the first sign of funding my dreams - A million miles from the truth.
I was also too threatening to many a young interviewer; too experienced and worldly-wise, and certainly too much of a handful for that rosy-cheeked ladess or lad, who'd take one look then run a mile.
Why should he employ me when I'd obviously be sniffing around his job in three months time? Why should he even consider one more travelled, more polished with clients, and knew most of the answers to questions his life had not yet asked?
In fact, the fear factor alone might kill him. The fear of the equally sharp suit, the immediate, credible answers. The fear of the finished article that now presented a threat to his settled kingdom.
I spelled trouble; independence, and self-sufficiency. Although my intentions were far from his initial misconceptions. Guilty until proven innocent.

'He can't be employed, not under any circumstances, ...because!'
'Because what?'
'I  don't  know why. Just because! - Look; he's 'over-qualified', over-confident, and dare we say it, too old'.
'Shhhhhh, don't say that anymore, it's 2006'.
'Ok, he's 'not what we require at this given time', or maybe, 'suited to something closer to his skill set', or, '..the job went last Wednesday'. That's it. That'll sound credible, and what's more, he won't think of suing us for divulging 'the truth'. Each dismissive decision another dagger to the heart.

Let's be honest , the whole process is a game. A game where quinquagenarians are required to throw a seven with one dice, then an eight in the hope of anything approaching being taken seriously. Sadly, it's a game where the snakes heavily outnumber the ladders. In other words, we simply haven't got a chance. Recruiting is about numbers, not lives or skills; and bottom lines; rarely about taking that extra few moments to promote the less obvious. Nobody moves our goal posts, they simply hide the pitch!

Truth is, this is an ageist country. First signs of grey hair equals senility, the losing of one's own personal Elgin's. The widely-held perception is of checkered blankets and constant visits to the little boy's room on the opening bars of the Countdown theme. We are seen as the future population of a plethora of south coast towns, while the truth about our experience is brushed under a very large rug.
We are the forgotten people, with little stamina, and unhealthy interests in afternoon naps between admiring glances of the numerate Miss Vorderman. Companies see us as having little to offer, rarely considering the next fifteen to twenty years of our working lives as a reasonable response – or the fact that we're more likely to stay put than the high-flying newcomer!
Recruiters lie to us in favour of the less experienced, remaining transfixed on promoting the cast of The Apprentice - a stream of over-aggressive wannabes, sporting Next summer collections, and spouting 'Holistic', 'Ballpark', and Generic' in every sentence to impress.
While we 'walk the walk', they 'talk the talk'. It's what people have convinced themselves they need to hear..

''Your client-base interface will take the form of digitally-recorded data'' [You will need to answer the phone]. ''You will be required to multi-task, offer a full understanding of databases, WP packages, and software'' [You will sometimes be asked to do more than one persons work. Normally the sicknotes that we can't sack]. ''You will be of graduate level'' [We want you to be cheap and malleable]...etc. Amen.

Why doesn't anybody tell the truth anymore? Why have we been consumed by Americanized gobbledegook; an office world entranced by unintelligible in-speak, devised for those with little substance, yet lots to say? And why have we allowed political correctness to rule our actions, with it's trepidation of what might happen ruling our heads, causing this false state of fear that rules our working day? - Or in our case, our non-working day.

And what of the recruitment business? A world so heavily gripped by fears and lies and lack of responses? A world of contentious, outrageous, and spurious claims of 'championing the cause of people like me', with nothing to back it up but months of eerie silence?

So what will change? Answer; nothing!
Recruiters may well feel compelled to interview a few more of the shuffling dead, sifting us out well before the all-important short list stage. Lip service will be paid in an initial flurry of court appearances, thus swelling the coffers of a few lucky beneficiaries of the UK's growing compensation culture. In short, we will still be out here in our droves; losing hope and confidence by the day, thus sustaining the national perspective that this is the world of the least chronologically challenged, err, I mean young. Would somebody please prove me wrong?

I yearn for the truth, and wait with baited breath at the government’s official figures on the plethora of newly-employed over-forties. In truth, my mind isn't filling in overtime forms, although I feel those figures may be massaged more than my ego.
I'd also love to know if the excuses, or silences, emanating from the recruitment world is agency or client driven, and whether they realize the damage they do to the waiting, squirming, redundant army, who merely want an answer to allow them to move on. Replies please on a pinhead, to the disappointed, hardworking, articulate fifty-one year old, who [allegedly] can write, administrate, sell and represent, and simply wants a straight answer to a simple question.

Change of law, or change of excuses?
Got to go, I've a ten-letter word for Carol; Camouflage...

Job
News at Ten
Waiting...