Age Discrimination???

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Also, if there is not a shortage of workers all retreads likely are getting rejected at the front end. Why take a chance on someone who has likely already failed on one career path? I get a lot of middle aged culinary school grads like this applying, all such applications go instantly into the trash, I have no need to roll the dice with a one time loser.

that's rather short-sighted

lots of folks take their funds from a successful first career to fund training at something more interesting

I suppose that's why most of the good restos in Toronto/New York/Chicago etc are opened by 35 - 50 year old chefs. That's where the creativity in kitchens is coming from - not from 25 year old culinary school grads.

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@ehBeth,

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@hawkeye10,

Quote:

I get a lot of middle aged culinary school grads like this applying, all such applications go instantly into the trash, I have no need to roll the dice with a one time loser.

Aside from (as somebody else indicated) that they may now be embarking on a second career (my mentor for example spent 20 years as an accountant before he entered his second career), there is the fact that many young folks just graduating have no real work ethic. They haven't learned how difficult the daily grind can be. You really want some kid who shows up late or goofs off on the job? Additionally, they'll often have less appreciation for the job since they haven't had to run through hoops in order to get the spot. Maybe they never had to actually go for an interview before and therefore have no idea how fortunate they are...it'll show when you can't locate them as they're off in the kitchen tapping away on their cellphone.

Then again, if the people planning to apply for a position in your slop house knew what a pukey personality you generally have towards others, they'd like as not, not even apply there. But you go right on ahead thinking you're a wise and capable businessman who knows best about everything.

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I concur with both ehBeth and Sturgis.

Hawkeye, didn't you do something else at some point in your life, or you a successful restaurant manager right out of the womb?

What if your restaurant goes under at some time in the future? Could happen.
Would you just be ready to hang it up because you failed on that career path?

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@ossobuco,

Thanks for the help. She actually did have one former instructor at a hospital call a hiring manager and speak glowingly of her, but he never responded at all. Cold calling isn't necessarily completely out, but please remember that there are only about 15 hospitals and clinics in total where she can work. The diagnostic labs like Tower require experience. As for teaching, she would need to go back to school and get another degree, and it is unlikely that she would be permitted to teach something that she had never personally done.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

Reading through this thread Brandon, I don't see where you answered how people are figuring out how old she is by her resume.

Is she listing jobs all the way back when she was 16 or something?

Can you list only the positions she's had more recently, that would make her appear to be in her early 30's?

There was originally a reference to the years of her degree, but we removed that. She has only ever had a few jobs, none skilled, and no one could figure out her age from them.

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@chai2,

chai2 wrote:

Also (I don't know if this has been covered), are there a lot of short term employment, lasting a year or less?

If the HR dept is seeing she stays at positions short term, that's a good indicator it'll happen to them too.

Training costs a lot of money. There's a lot of costs that aren't apparent.

The shortest amount of time of any job is one year apiece at two department stores in our town. In both cases, her managers there begged her not to go. The two jobs in Bulgaria lasted much longer.

Actually, at the first department store here in town, after one year, she said that she was quitting to go back to college. The store manager replied, "No." My wife said, "I don't know what that means. I won't be here." She has always been very popular at the places where she worked.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
although they do appear in the email cover letter which has the resume attached.

get rid of anything referencing grades

it sounds like you need an expert to look at the resume and the covering letter

it could be problematic as she's already applied to all the likely spots but on the upside most places toss resumes after three - four months so if her name doesn't register no one will note it's her second go-round applying

Alright. Will do. After she was ignored at a few places, I thought mentioning the good grades in the cover letter my get her foot in the door, but perhaps I was wrong.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

your wife picked the wrong program at the wrong time

it seems like she doesn't have a good resume or covering letter

you don't seem to really like anyone's advice or recommendations

you just want things to be different

well, don't we all

to quote you elsewhere

Brandon9000 wrote:
I also said that society isn't, beyond the previously mentioned, responsible for bailing people out of their poor life decisions.

you might want to think again about, in effect, saying 'tough ****' to others

and before you start down the trail of "this is different", I'll tell you straight up - it's not

<this is what it's like to channel my inner chai2 - cool>

I'm not asking society to bail me out and pay my rent. I just wish that a good student with perfect grades and excellent letters of recommendation could get half the opportunity of a 20 year old who did poorly in school.

Also, choosing a career as a med tech at the wrong time but doing great in school isn't quite the same type of mistake as having 15 kids with little money to support them and marrying a drug dealer.

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@Brandon9000,

did you address the placement services of the school? I dont understand why you seem to be still guessing about what the problem is, these people should know. They also should have offered resume and CL help.

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@Brandon9000,

I looked back to see if I said anything about teaching, but no - I said university. My first full time job was in a university research setting, where they were trying to set up a place to do then-new tests of an immunological sort. That was major luck for me. I had just finished my training as a regular post b.a. lab tech. Be aware there are a lot of med research labs that aren't clinical labs... thus my mention of university. Likely they pick former students there for any starter help, but in my time, they looked at applications, period. One of my hires when I had my "own" lab was an older to me back then chubby guy from the army. Not kidding, he was at least 350-400, maybe plus. People rolled their eyes but I thought he sounded good and he was, terrific.

Many years later I changed fields, as I've mentioned, and wanted a job in the new field, and went to the university to look at the student work ads in some quonset hut there at the time, just to see what was there, as after all, I can type even if it wasn't the new field. I was twenty years past being a student there. I don't remember if I called or just went to the department, but had an interview and was sucked up into the worst job of my life, long story, but they made me the coordinator.. Anyway, I was as old as your wife.

Hang in there.

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@Brandon9000,

Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity

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@ossobuco,

One more thing, at the last lab I worked in, that became one of the bigs about the time I left, we hired people to do things like check in blood samples, some routine but others from all over the world, a trick in itself re specimen handling. I think the two people were then students at the local city college. One was from Vietnam, and she has long since had a doctorate from Cal Tech, and one was from an african country I won't name so as not to identify him, and he's had his own lab since in a major hospital. That's part of what I was saying about doubting about someone's first name, but I suppose bias happens in some offices.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

did you address the placement services of the school? I dont understand why you seem to be still guessing about what the problem is, these people should know. They also should have offered resume and CL help.

My wife and I have seen no evidence of the existence of a placement service, but we'll investigate. If such exists, it is odd that two professors who she talks to about finding a job have never mentioned it.

By the way, these two professors have both looked at her resume and say that they see nothing wrong with it.

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@sunyata,

sunyata wrote:

Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity

Thanks for trying to hijack my thread to suit your purposes.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

jespah wrote:

This. Plus it's possible that there is age discrimination. It is certain alive and well in America.

Have you tried pushing the placement department where she went to school?

There doesn't seem to be a placement department. At least such a thing has never been mentioned.

jeesus murphy - this was on the first page of this thread - around April 20th - and you guys haven't looked into it yet?

if the whole job search has been approached like this, it really makes sense that your wife is making no progress

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@Brandon9000,

u misunderstood...
looking upon success and failure with an equal eye

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:

jespah wrote:

This. Plus it's possible that there is age discrimination. It is certain alive and well in America.

Have you tried pushing the placement department where she went to school?

There doesn't seem to be a placement department. At least such a thing has never been mentioned.

jeesus murphy - this was on the first page of this thread - around April 20th - and you guys haven't looked into it yet?

if the whole job search has been approached like this, it really makes sense that your wife is making no progress

My wife sent applications to every hospital within about 30 miles that advertised a job in her field, which I think is about 15. She has visited people she worked with during her rotation and mentioned that she's still looking. It seems like a reasonable approach.

None of her professors, nor her fellow graduates, even now when they know she has failed to find a job, has ever mentioned a job placement office for people with this degree, and at no point in the curriculum did any professor or student mention it. None of her age 40+ colleagues who are still looking for jobs has ever mentioned a placement service, and she has talked with them many times at great length about their job searches. She knows how most of her colleagues that found jobs obtained them and she knows of none that has used or tried to use a university job placement service. That strikes me as odd if such a thing exists for this major. I guess we will have to contact the university and ask, but, we will not be able to do so by phoning any university office, since the university essentially never answer phones.

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@Brandon9000,

Brandon9000 wrote:

I can think of three possible factors causing this.

One factor you didn't consider is that over five years after the financial crisis, the economy is still limping all across the job market. (Not just for unskilled workers as some news reporting would have you believe.) In a bad economy like ours, someone is going to fall through the cracks. There's no particular reason it should hit your wife, but there's no particular reason it shouldn't, either.

Brandon9000 wrote:

It makes me sad and seems unfair.

It is sad, and it is unfair. One minor piece of advice: Don't take it personally, and remember that the job market's behavior says nothing about your wife's value as a person. Contrary to what you might read in the Wall Street Journal, America is not a meritocracy. All the best to you and your wife!

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
I can think of three possible factors causing this.

One factor you didn't consider is that over five years after the financial crisis, the economy is still limping all across the job market. (Not just for unskilled workers as some news reporting would have you believe.) In a bad economy like ours, someone is going to fall through the cracks. There's no particular reason it should hit your wife, but there's no particular reason it shouldn't, either.

Brandon9000 wrote:
It makes me sad and seems unfair.

It is sad, and it is unfair. One minor piece of advice: Don't take it personally, and remember that the job market's behavior says nothing about your wife's value as a person. Contrary to what you might read in the Wall Street Journal, America is not a meritocracy. All the best to you and your wife!

I appreciate your words.

1 Reply

Age Discrimination???

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