Job Skills How much do companies care about people's age?

[Grands]

Hi
How much companies that hires people with a degree care about their age?
Considering that two person has bot no experience for the work, a company prefer to hire younger people, or they care more about the skills a person have?

Thanks.

 

[phinds]

Hi
How much companies that hires people with a degree care about their age?
Considering that two person has bot no experience for the work, a company prefer to hire younger people, or they care more about the skills a person have?

Thanks.

Depends entirely on the situation. I can't imagine that there is any hard and fast rule but there is likely some preference for a skilled person but they may want an entry level person for two reasons. First, less pay, and second so they can train them from scratch.

 

[Grands]

I mean, there are problem if a person get the degree in 5 years instead of 4?

P.S In my country only 20% of students get the degree in time.

 

[CrysPhys]

I mean, there are problem if a person get the degree in 5 years instead of 4?

P.S In my country only 20% of students get the degree in time.

I can't imagine 1 year making a difference to anyone. Your question usually comes in the context of say a 21-yr old grad vs a 40-yr old grad (didn't go to a university when he was younger, but later in life has decided to).

 

[Grands]

In intended to make a difference between a person that graduated in time, vs someone that needed more years to take the degree.

 

[Choppy]

In intended to make a difference between a person that graduated in time, vs someone that needed more years to take the degree.

In my experience, there is no perceptible difference in terms of competitiveness for positions. There are a lot of reasons someone might spend an extra year or two on their education... illness, a need to work part-time to pay for it, figuring out what to major in, doing volunteer work on the side, spending time traveling abroad... most of them have absolutely nothing to do with how fit an individual is for a given position.

There's no competitive advantage in finishing early.

As CrysPhys said, there may be concerns for people who are trying to enter certain industries with very large age differences. But even then someone who is in his or her forties and competing against twenty-somethings will also have advantages that can be marketed such as maturity and life-experience, qualities that many employers will covet.

 

[CrysPhys]

I mean, there are problem if a person get the degree in 5 years instead of 4?

P.S In my country only 20% of students get the degree in time.

In intended to make a difference between a person that graduated in time, vs someone that needed more years to take the degree.

(1) A one year difference would hardly be noticeable on a resume. A substantially larger discrepancy would raise a red flag. If there is a substantial discrepancy, then the key issue is whether you have a good reason to explain why.

(2) If the employer is in Italy, then 5 yrs would be expected according to your info, correct?

(3) The typical length of time to a get a degree (high-school, bachelor's, ...) varies from country to country. If the employer is not in Italy, he would probably figure, "Hey, that's Italy."

 

[Grands]

If the employer is in Italy, then 5 yrs would be expected according to your info, correct?

I made a mistake, I didn't said that in italy we have a bachelor's degree of 3 years and a master degree of 2 years.
I've heard the minister of Education that says is very important to get a degree as fast as possible and losing a year can be a dramma.
In Italy we can make the same exam more then once if you don't like the score you made.
Many people prefer to do that to get a more high mark, or prefer to do only few exam instead of all, to concentrate on them, this because many company ask a score to hire you.

https://media.licdn.com/media-proxy/ext?w=800&h=800&hash=u7LQo62ShfCsJjs5JW4WyBN78ME%3D&ora=1%2CaFBCTXdkRmpGL2lvQUFBPQ%2CxAVta9Er0Vinkhwfjw8177yE41y87UNCVordEGXyD3u0qYrdf3PrcJOLcLWnuQwReXkclAA0LfKgQTCzD5G_fdu5fNlw2pLgco27dA4BYBI3iSdF_NQ8
Here a person ask ( pieni voti) that means the height possible mark that in Italy is 110 with magna cum laude in Civil Engineering, that is 5 GPA in USA I suppose, know how to speak german and english, be able to work abroad when your boss want, a job that is available only for 6 months, for 600 euros...and to survive in Italy you need at least 1000 euros.

You can make more money at McDonald, I think.

 

[symbolipoint]

Age really does matter, although we do not want it to matter. With age comes years of experience and an expectation (usually) of higher pay-rate. Unfortunately, with age also comes shorter time until retirement, higher probability of illness or death and more family responsibilities. Employers may often try to discriminate about age because they wish to pay less, not more; and they want the employee to endure with the company for a while. At the same time, an older job-seeker may really want to accept lower pay because he may have been unemployed for a long time - but this often comes with having less experience because of having been unemployed for some time.

Decision to change CAREERS? Sometimes this makes things worse!

 

[Grands]

Age really does matter, although we do not want it to matter. With age comes years of experience and an expectation (usually) of higher pay-rate. Unfortunately, with age also comes shorter time until retirement, higher probability of illness or death and more family responsibilities.

This is very different to what was wrote in the first replies.
Which is the truth?

 

[mathwonk]

Symbolipoint is correct in my experience. Shortly after retirement I responded, with brief vita including birth date, to an advertised tenure track position for a researcher/teacher in my area at a local college. Although I was likely among the most qualified applicants by experience and accomplishment, conceivably the most, I was told by return email that no position was currently open to me. This in spite of one being openly advertised online. They apparently wanted only a younger person, who as suggested above, would command lower pay, and serve longer, in spite of the use of such criteria in hiring being against federal law. I might have pointed this out to them but was so discouraged I just stopped looking for work. Happily I was subsequently recruited as a teacher-tutor of the gifted, because of my visibility online, by someone who valued age and experience, but at much lower pay, although with greater job satisfaction and appreciation.

Years ago I experienced this from the opposite perspective. As a young man in my 20's I was hired at minimum salary by a local state college math dept. Within two years they had forced out two much more experienced and well qualified (and higher paid) men in their 50's or 60's. When I asked a friend why they had let such good men go, I was told it was partly to be able to keep me. My friend had reluctantly agreed to let them go but said they had been given an administrative directive to cut someone and otherwise it would have been me, the young energetic and cheap guy. Fortunately for me I was later also forced out (for lack of a PhD), and obliged to get my PhD and find a much more fulfilling job at a better school. (The price was several more years of struggle in poverty and with a family to feed.) Prior to tenure, academic jobs in the US are extremely competitive, although with the retirement of the baby boomers that may change somewhat.

 

[CrysPhys]

This is very different to what was wrote in the first replies.
Which is the truth?

Be very careful of any conclusions you draw from responses here. You worded the question title improperly. As I discussed earlier, a difference of a year or two between two candidates won't make any difference. A difference of 20 years or so will.

 

[Grands]

Be very careful of any conclusions you draw from responses here. You worded the question title improperly. As I discussed earlier, a difference of a year or two between two candidates won't make any difference. A difference of 20 years or so will.

I hope this is true, I hope companies don't care to hire a persone because is 26 instead of 25 or 24.

 

[mathwonk]

Indeed, a 26 year old candidate who spent two years on a prestigious postdoc, is more attractive as a potential hire than a 24 year old without such experience. Even a very accomplished 60 year old is probably less appealing than a promising 30 year old.

 

[CrysPhys]

Indeed, a 26 year old candidate who spent two years on a prestigious postdoc, is more attractive as a potential hire than a 24 year old without such experience.

Again, this thread is getting confounded with issues of age per se, years of experience, and taking too long to finish a degree.

 

[symbolipoint]

Again, this thread is getting confounded with issues of age per se, years of experience, and taking too long to finish a degree.

Yes; but they will sometimes be related. A good thing to do, is once earning a degree (bachelor's degree), get a job, and keep working. Interruptions to employment become a bigger increasing risk as the length of unemployment or the number of unemployment periods increase. Still, for people who maintained longer employment may come increasing salaries. If needing later to find a job, then one of the problems to face is prospective companies telling you that you are overqualified - basically because they want to pay a YOUNGER person a LOWER salary, and they will find such persons to hire.

There is also another problem. As you just "Keep working", your kinds of experiences may grow very little or not at all, since you had lack of opportunity to learn newer or better or more things.

 

[Grands]

Indeed, a 26 year old candidate who spent two years on a prestigious postdoc, is more attractive as a potential hire than a 24 year old without such experience. Even a very accomplished 60 year old is probably less appealing than a promising 30 year old.

Yes, but what if a person go to the university two or three years after the average people.
Can be this a deficit?

 

[symbolipoint]

Yes, but what if a person go to the university two or three years after the average people.
Can be this a deficit?

Yes, but not always an impossible deficit. In this general case, having some experience can help. By the time you graduate and look for a job, other people have graduated and are at your age and already have their 2 or 3 years of experience (while you were finishing your last 2 or 3 years of school).

 

[Grands]

I'm not talking about years of experience, but about the fact of going to the university after be 19 years old.

 

[symbolipoint]

I'm not talking about years of experience, but about the fact of going to the university after be 19 years old.

Not clear. Too wide open. Go to university at age 20 versus go to university at age 40 - very different. Which person more likely has at least 10 years of experience in their field? Which person more likely has very little experience? To be clearer and practical: Decide on the major field, pick and attend university, earn your degree, and then find a job. Stay in the job for a while (or quickly look for a new one if you lose your first job).

 

[Grands]

Not clear. Too wide open. Go to university at age 20 versus go to university at age 40 - very different. Which person more likely has at least 10 years of experience in their field? Which person more likely has very little experience? To be clearer and practical: Decide on the major field, pick and attend university, earn your degree, and then find a job. Stay in the job for a while (or quickly look for a new one if you lose your first job).

If a person go to the university at 20 instead of 18 or 19 is the same for companies ?

 

[symbolipoint]

If a person go to the university at 20 instead of 18 or 19 is the same for companies ?

Not much difference. One graduate is off by just 2 years from the other graduates. If a company looks to hire someone for an entry-level position, the company would mostly be interested to know which candidates know how to solve the problems in which the company is interested.

 

[Choppy]

One of the points of confusion in this thread is that the OP seems to be a lot more interested in the specific question of a student taking an extra year or two to finish a bachelor's degree (or master's degree) and the direct impact of that on the student's ability to find a job after graduating - NOT the more broad question implied in the title of whether ageism in general is a factor in hiring decisions.

People have different experiences. And when you ask a question like this on an internet forum, you're going to get an array of responses. But it's important to remember that the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'

Unless someone can point to a study that says otherwise, I strongly suspect that for the specific question of interest - taking an extra year to graduate - there would be too high of a signal to noise ratio in any study to discern a statistically significant and practically meaningful difference. You might just as well be asking about people's ability to tell the difference between twenty-two year olds and twenty-four years olds based on appearances.

From a pragmatic point of view any difference in employability, if it even exists at all, is not likely to be so great as to necessitate influencing a decision to stay in school for another year or not, because such a decision has to be weighed against other factors such as the ability to build a network of professional connections, influence on grades, the ability to take extra courses and widen one's skill set, volunteer work, and even quality of student life.

 

[CrysPhys]

If a person go to the university at 20 instead of 18 or 19 is the same for companies ?

Also, a year or two is in the noise. I don't know how the school system operates in Italy. But in the US, the school year typically (with some exceptions) starts in late Aug or early Sept. When a young child first enrolls in elementary school (e.g., kindergarten or first grade), there are certain age requirements that he must meet; these age requirements vary with locality. E.g., assume a child must start school if he has turned 6 by Sept 1, and that he is allowed to start school if he turns 6 by Nov 1 of the current school year. So, if a child turns 6 between Sept 2 and Nov 1, some parents will opt to enroll the child at the start of the current school year if they believe the child is ready. Other parents, however, do not want their child to be among the youngest in the class, and feel their child will do better if he is among the oldest in the class; these parents will opt to enroll their child the following year. So at the start of any given school year, there will be children turning 6, along with children turning 7 ... about a one year spread.

Additionally, in recent years, some seniors graduating from high school are opting to take a "gap" year before starting college. I don't know the statistics on how many are doing this. But over the past few months, I've talked to four or so who are. So if you take into account the different age in starting elementary school, along with a voluntary gap year, you have a two year spread in starting college.

 

[mathwonk]

as mentioned above, it is extremely common in the US for indergraduates in college to take more than 4 years after their graduation from high school to finish college. In the 1960's, I recall that perhaps 25% of each class at Harvard took a year or more off before graduating. I did so myself, and my three roommates took 1, 1 and 2 years off. This had essentially no effect on their future careers. Moreover it is common for students to spend an extra year after high school in preparing for college, especially athletes and others desiring to gain entrance to an elite school and hoping to improve the chance of acceptance by taking an extra year of preparation at a "Prep" school. This was suggested as an option to my son who hoped to gain acceptance to an elite college and play basketball there. It is an advantage for a college athete to be older since a 25 year old makes a more mature athlete than an 18 year old. Indeed one classmate of mine, Christian O'Hiri, regarded as the greatest soccer player ever to play at Harvard, entered as a freshman at the age of 22, after already playing on an Olympic soccer team. It was seldom even mentioned, as he dominated ivy league soccer, that he was 4 years older than the competing players. I myself graduated college the year I turned 23, and my two sons turned 23 and 24 in their graduation years. None of these age differences affected any of us to my knowledge. I also delayed obtaining my PhD, receiving it at the age of 35, rather than say 25 or 30. This played no role in my competition for a place in graduate school or for a tenure track job. It did however play a role in determining the number of years during which I was able to accumulate retirement credit after being hired. I.e. people usually retire in the US between 65 and 70, so a person who starts work at 25 or 30 thus has more credit toward retirement than one who starts at 35 or later. (Technically professors with tenure do not have to retire at a given age, but univertsities can do things to encourage them to do so, such as make the retirement salary calculation go down for older workers, or increase the burden of their teaching load.) But basically I think we are saying you do not have to worry about how starting uni say at 20 will affect your future. I.e. for a young person, a time variation of even 4 or 5 years probably makes very little difference.

 

[Grands]

as mentioned above, it is extremely common in the US for indergraduates in college to take more than 4 years after their graduation from high school to finish college. In the 1960's, I recall that perhaps 25% of each class at Harvard took a year or more off before graduating. I did so myself, and my three roommates took 1, 1 and 2 years off. This had essentially no effect on their future careers. Moreover it is common for students to spend an extra year after high school in preparing for college, especially athletes and others desiring to gain entrance to an elite school and hoping to improve the chance of acceptance by taking an extra year of preparation at a "Prep" school. This was suggested as an option to my son who hoped to gain acceptance to an elite college and play basketball there. It is an advantage for a college athete to be older since a 25 year old makes a more mature athlete than an 18 year old. Indeed one classmate of mine, Christian O'Hiri, regarded as the greatest soccer player ever to play at Harvard, entered as a freshman at the age of 22, after already playing on an Olympic soccer team. It was seldom even mentioned, as he dominated ivy league soccer, that he was 4 years older than the competing players. I myself graduated college the year I turned 23, and my two sons turned 23 and 24 in their graduation years. None of these age differences affected any of us to my knowledge. I also delayed obtaining my PhD, receiving it at the age of 35, rather than say 25 or 30. This played no role in my competition for a place in graduate school or for a tenure track job. It did however play a role in determining the number of years during which I was able to accumulate retirement credit after being hired. I.e. people usually retire in the US between 65 and 70, so a person who starts work at 25 or 30 thus has more credit toward retirement than one who starts at 35 or later. (Technically professors with tenure do not have to retire at a given age, but univertsities can do things to encourage them to do so, such as make the retirement salary calculation go down for older workers, or increase the burden of their teaching load.) But basically I think we are saying you do not have to worry about how starting uni say at 20 will affect your future. I.e. for a young person, a time variation of even 4 or 5 years probably makes very little difference.

This is a very good answer to my question.
@mathwonk thanks a lot for sharing your experience in this thread !

 

[newjerseyrunner]

In my experience, it depends on the quality standards of the company. I've worked for companies that exclusively hired young, fresh-out-of-college types simply because it was way cheaper. After a decade in engineering, your starting salary for a new job doubles, so start-ups tend to stick to the lower end. Big companies or established companies will pay more for extra experience.