Valuing Experience

Recruitment and Selection

Employers chose to work at three different levels in this area.
1. Removing unnecessary barriers
2. Making sure they are giving older workers a fair go
3. Actively tapping into that part of the labour market.

Currently most employers are working at the first two levels. Increasingly, though, they are starting to think about how they might move to the third.

Removing unnecessary barriers
This is basically about making sure your policies and practices are legal. Recruitment and selection is the area that the Human Rights Commission receives the most age discrimination complaints about. Employers are finding that they need to take deliberate and ongoing steps to ensure that they are not putting in place unnecessary barriers to the appointment of older employees.

Unnecessary barriers can arise in different areas.

Job requirements
• Focus on the skills required rather than assuming where these skills may be found. If you need people to work effectively with young customers or clients, do not assume younger workers will be able to do this and older workers will not.
• Make sure that any physical requirements are directly relevant to the work.
• Focus on what needs to be achieved, rather than how it has been done in the past. Older workers may have learnt different but equally valid ways of doing things.

Recruitment messages
• Make sure that advertisements and job descriptions do not include explicit or implicit references to age. This may be in the wording or images. It can be useful to check out recruitment messages with a range of people of different ages to get their impressions on what kinds of people you seem to be looking for and what kinds of people you are trying to discourage. The message may not be what you intended.
• Make sure that people handling enquiries and applications talk about the role and the expectations in a way that does not discriminate against older workers. Explicitly state that the company will seriously consider all applications, regardless of age. It may be useful to have them rehearse how they might respond to queries to ensure that they are not unintentionally sending a negative message to older applicants.
• If you use recruitment consultants, be explicit that the company is interested in skills, not age. Be careful that you do not give them the impression that you are looking for people in any particular age bracket.

Selection panels
• Make sure all people involved in your selection process understand their legal obligations and how intentional and unintentional discrimination can occur.
• Prepare and check the questions that selection panels intend to use to ensure that they do not suggest that the company is not interested in older employees.
• Include a prompt in the decision-making process to check that the panel is focusing on skills to do the job and not age.

Giving older workers a fair go
This is about ensuring that the people involved in the recruitment and selection process are actively open to considering the employment of older workers.

Broaden your recruitment approach
• Make sure you advertise in places or ways that will also reach older employees. ACC has found it effective to advertise in community newspapers. Others have found it useful to use a network approach that includes asking their current older employees to talk to other people they know that might be suitable for the role.
• Make sure that any pictures you use in advertising or promotional materials also include older people.
• Be explicit in your recruitment messages that you are interested in whether people can do the job, not their age.

Consider older workers for different types of work
• Consider older workers for areas where you may have only employed students in the past, such as includes seasonal or part-time work.
• Consider older workers who may appear to be overqualified for the role. Genesis Energy has found that older workers who genuinely want to reduce their work demands and understand the potential frustrations that may occur, have ended up being valuable employees.

Actively tapping into the older labour market
Some employers find it useful to actively tap into the older part of the labour market. This may be a general policy, particularly when there are skill shortages. It may be for specific roles or in specific locations, or it may be to complement an existing team. Genesis Energy has found this a useful strategy for introducing maturity and experience into a young team.

Strategies for doing this include:
• Working in partnership with community organisations. This has been done more often internationally than in New Zealand, but interest is growing.
• Targeting specific media. Ask newspapers, magazine or websites about the demographics of their readership. Find those that match your needs.
• Checking that any recruitment consultants you use have strategies for tapping into this part of the labour market.
• Profile the achievements of older employees in local media.
• Ensuring that you include older employees in frontline roles within your organisation or in any publicity or promotional materials. If people see employees who they identify with, they are more likely to consider applying.
• If being able to work effectively with older clients or customers is an important part of the job, this should be stated in your job description and advertising.
• Actively promoting your company’s openness to working in alternative ways.
• Refer to options in your recruitment materials such as medical insurance, superannuation contributions or the ability to negotiate additional leave that may appeal to older workers.