Why should it be that after having studied and worked nearly all your life you should be more or less told or shown that after forty years old you are considered too old to be hired by any company?

Firstly a person of forty years of age or more has had a whole load more experiences than a youngster of 21 both on a personal aspect and also in the business world.  A person who is over forty has usually settled down and is not only in a stable family environment but is also more reliable and conscientious about his work.  So if I was an employer and I was looking for someone who would give his all to the job I personally would always look for an older person.

A youngster still has to fall in love, marry and possibly end up having children which is always going to detract them from their work both while they are falling in love, because during that stage in their life their minds will almost certainly be up in the clouds for most of the time!!!  And most probably also get pregnant and need to take considerable time off work not only for the birth but later on for the inevitable problems and illnesses that children tend to get and which the mother needs to tend to.

One could compare it to the drivers of cars.  Who is going to be more experienced and know how to handle critical and unexpected situations on the road ?  A youngster who has just passed his test or a person that has been driving for years and who has already been through quite a few dangerous and near miss experiences already?  Well it is obvious that it will be the older driver and the statistics prove that most accidents involve youngsters who still don't know how to handle a car at high speeds or handle the car at all for that matter.  You are allowed to pass the driving test because you more or less know the basics but the real driving of a car comes with time and practice.

I am sure that any youngster out there reading this is going to feel outraged at what I am saying but I am afraid that it is the truth and I will even admit that when I was very young the same thing happened to me when I first started driving.

You get your new car and you set off onto the highway and for the first time you are able to really put your foot down on the pedal and get up to speeds that you never for once were able to do while you had your driving instructor sitting next to you.  And now is when you begin to see how the car reacts at faster speeds and it has nothing to do with the lower speeds that you were used to.  You will find that you have to balance the car round corners playing with the brakes and accelerator and you will notice how even the speed of the wind or overtaking a large lorry can make all the difference as to how your car reacts.  You never got to learn this while you were driving round your town with your instructor at maybe no more than 80 kilometres an hour!!!

So coming back to the job situation everything comes down to experience.  Why do younger people ask older people for advice?  Well simply because they have lived longer, have gone through many more experiences than the younger person and so probably know quite a bit more!

And another point I want to make is that why do companies keep on putting down an age limit of up to 35 years of age or maybe at the most 40 (but 40 is quite rare to see) in their vacancy offers ?  One supposes that a working life is supposed to go from the age of about 20 right up until 65 years of age when the government then grants you your well earned pension which you have been contributing towards during the whole of your working life. 

If companies refuse to take on people over the age of 40 then what do all these people do for the remaining 25 years of their working lives until they are eligible to receive their pension?  How do they live?  How do they eat?

In my view the governments should either reduce the age at which a person can begin to receive their pension to let's say 40 seeing as hardly any company wants to take on a 40 year old or if not change the laws so that it be against the law to stipulate that only people of a certain age can apply for job vacancies and put it into force in such a way that the company is penalised if they are found to have rejected a perfectly adequate applicant for a job just because of their age!!! 

This little hub goes out to Nell Rose (another hubber) and anyone else out there who is having trouble in finding a job simply because they have become wise and experienced!!!!