Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
I&#x27;m a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large multinational company I won&#x27;t name. The woman who gave the presentation services her company&#x27;s contract with a tech company, that, let&#x27;s just say, has a big share of the search engine market.<p>She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, &quot;the type of people on the other side of the table from us are different than they used to be, and they don&#x27;t want to be dealing with a bunch of 65-year-old white guys. So those aren&#x27;t the type of people we&#x27;re looking for.&quot; That&#x27;s pretty much a direct quote.<p>I was at a small company before I went to grad school. The company began working with a guy in his sixties who&#x27;d been laid off for a while and couldn&#x27;t find work, even though he had a ton of experience. We brought him in on a contract basis, and his role gradually expanded as it became clear that he had both excellent technical knowledge and great people skills. He became a mentor to me and helped me out a ton. He&#x27;s objectively better at our profession than I am in multiple dimensions, but right now I could find a new job ten times more easily than he could.<p>I&#x27;d like to start a business in 3 or 4 years, and I&#x27;m seriously considering going out of my way to target people like him. It&#x27;ll be my competitive advantage.