Triumph of hope and experience

When Alain van Gils was looking for a gap in the market to pitch his new employment agency the obvious group which needed help finding work was the over-45s.

In the year since the Thinkwell agency was launched, the amount of age discrimination that operates in the job market has become even clearer.

The excuses he and his business partner Craig Anderson have heard are the usual suspects. It means well-qualified candidates return from interviews still jobless.

They range from the old excuses that over-45s are too expensive to retrain or that they would not fit in, to the most galling of all, that they have only a few good years left in them.

Mr van Gils said: "They really are cop-out answers and it is almost verging on the point of cowardice.

"We would like to name and shame the companies that openly discriminate against age that we have come across in the year we have been operating in Brighton and Hove.

"We take all the applications and interviews and we can extrapolate figures that show some companies are just not interested."

The problems older people encounter in the job market are not new.

Over-45s in Britain are 25 per cent more likely to be out of work than younger workers and typically spend three-and-a-half to four times longer looking for a job.

About half the workforce is made up of over-45s yet, in some sectors, the percentage of older workers is tiny.

In financial services, notoriously, only about seven per cent of employees are 45 or older.

Philip Walker, who chairs the Campaign Against Age Discrimination in Employment, said: "They are just not getting through the front door. They cannot get an answer to job advertisements.

"It has nothing to do with how experienced you are or how qualified you are. It is what age you are."

One of the hazards of getting that first foothold towards a new job in Brighton and Hove is almost comical, judging by Mr van Gils' experience since Thinkwell opened its offices in Preston Park Business Centre, Robertson Road.

He said: "Usually when a CV is received, nine times out of ten the CV will go before a member of staff in the 24 to 35 age bracket and they think of their parents.

"When somebody is 45, 55 or 61, they honestly think of their parents or grandparents.

That is the feedback we get and it is very understandable."

Most European countries have tougher rules to combat age discrimination at work. In Sweden, for example, there are about ten times the number of over-45s in jobs than there are in Britain.

Six different voluntary codes of practice have been published by the Government in the past 14 years but none has worked.

Ministers are consulting on new statutory rules, due to come into force in 2006 because of a European Union directive that is forcing the British to confront the problem.

The rules will be structured in the same way as laws outlawing race and sex discrimination and mirror the European model.

Mr van Gils said the new regulations would probably work but take some time for them to have an effect.

In the meantime, over-45s would still face the same old problems.

He said: "If there is an age on the CV, the tendency is for it to immediately go on to the 'No' pile.

"There are an increasing number of companies who will now interview a token number of over-45s to be seen to be doing the right thing with no intention of carrying it through.

"We have the discussion many times a day about how difficult it is to get real feedback about why a person was not considered."

However, once an older worker has got through that metaphorical front door the picture is not as bleak as sometimes appears.

Mr van Gils said when an applicant reached the interview stage, they stood good chance of winning the job.

Older workers were usually better at interviews, more at ease and often possessed more of the skills an employer was looking for than younger applicants.

They also tended to take less time off, worked harder, were less likely to be ill and more likely to show loyalty towards their employer.

Typically, an over-45 would stay in a job for four or more years, while people in their 20s moved on every 18 months.

Yet all the good things an employer should be looking for are often swept aside by the date of birth, the key feature on any CV or application form.

Should job hunters not give their date of birth?

Some employers, notably in the public sector, have already stopped asking, although Mr van Gils has mixed feelings.

He said: "I believe people should be proud of where they are in life and put their ages on. But unfortunately leads to that snap decision which we have to stop.

"Companies need to be aware there is an age resource out there they are not using, which just seems crazy.

"People should be considered on the strength of their experience, not their age or any other form of discrimination.

"I think age discrimination is one of the most pernicious.

It is the easiest to get away with and there is no real comeback at the moment."