I have noticed that some public sector application forms no longer ask for age, or date of birth, however by requesting dates for school education, further education, qualifications etc. the employer doesn't have to be so smart to work out the candidates age fairly accurately -
Left school at 15; or O levels at 16; A levels at 18; Degree at say 21.

Then there are dates for career history generally going back to say st 21 joined from Uni perhaps.

It is absurd to request this career date progression information, and then to pretend that the employer can consider the applicant without considering the candidate's calculated approximate age.

If age discrimination is to be bannished, there needs to be a big effort to ensure that application forms do not request such date information that allows these simple calculations. This type of discrimination will affect all of you at some time. As for as the legislation goea - we are certainly not there yet.

As a further point, that when the employer is a small organisation, perhaps such as a school, and the monitoring form if completed shows DoB and age information, which the recruiter is most likely to read; it would be asking a lot for the recruiter to ignore that information. If such age information is witheld form the monitoring form in those circumstances and for the obvious reason, the purpose of the monitoring is entirely defeated.

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Ozz

Hey there,

Great post, this is a massive problem.

Unfortunately because of the economic climate at the moment it's allot cheaper for businesses to find a much younger person that can be trained into a role for half the salary (or less) of an experienced person.

When your the wrong age and on the outside looking in its almost impossible for you to break through to the other side.

A change in application form would in one way balance the scales, but then the candidate would still have to go in for an interview, its at this point where their is no solid legislation that protects people from age discrimination.

With people set to start living longer we need a change in perspective of age, employers need to start judging people by their occupational merit as oppose to just age.

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Cath xx
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