Hiring: My biggest weakness? I'm 49.

I spoke to a friend of mine just the other day, he's born in the same golden year as I, 1967. Ergo, just like me, a 49 year old male. He told me he'd applied for exactly 100 positions in communications since late May. I probably don't have to tell you he didn't get any of those.

My friend decided, out of curiosity, to check who got the jobs. 84 out of the 100 positions went to females under the age of 30. Mind you, I have no bias against females under the age of 30 but it points to a few disconcerting potential issues. Before delving into them there are obviously things we need to address;

1. Yes, my friend is qualified, you could probably argue overqualified. He was online and in communications even before some of the other applicants were born.
2. No, he's got no personality impairments or other aspects of his persona that would disqualify him from work, apart maybe from being able to call out bullshit when he sees it.
3. Yes, he's humble and is fully prepared to take on a junior position just to get a job, and smart enough to realise that it is what it is.

So 84 out of a 100 jobs in my world points to both gender and age bias. A lot has been written about both subjects so I will not dig all to deep into that. What I want to point out is the intellectual destruction on a Godzilla scale that might be going on here. Everyone knows that a 50 year old has at least 20 more years before retirement, I would venture as far as saying that in our times with knowledge work, there is simply no reason to retire, the whole notion of retirement is largely a factor of the industrialisation. People's bodies were simply finished.

Today people eat right, exercise, have enough free time to constantly educate themselves and evolve. 50 is the new 30 of times gone by.

The great pity, and quite frankly, scandal is that organisations forego perhaps 30 years of experience on the basis that it is only a sub 30-something that can do something in an industry or vertical that is inherently perceived as a 'young' or 'modern'. Like digital communications for instance.

Digital communications is actually a very good example because to even be allowed to stay in the same ballpark, let alone excel, you need to update yourself at a minimum 1-2 hours per day, every day. Per definition, when you receive your MBA or BA in digital communications, your knowledge is in the same place as the Dodo birds, it's dead, extinct, no more. But here's the interesting thing; history has an uncanny way of repeating itself. So there is a very good chance we are hiring people with the displaced idea that they are fully educated and with no historical references. And dismiss the people that have seen it all before but have learned to stay on top of the food chain in knowledge all by themselves. I'm sure there are 100's of industries facing the same challenges.

I don't know who's to blame ultimately, 30 something communications managers hiring what they recognise? Are they wittingly hiring below their own competency level? Is it HR managers? Inexperience?

Blame storming is not really interesting, the real question is what will happen to us in the knowledge economy if we let all knowledge and experience get lost over and over? Then we are obviously doomed, as a modern time Sisyphus, to repeat our mistakes and learn from scratch, every generation.