In our professional experience, we have met many who tell us that they do not hire young people because they are very irresponsible and do not comply with what is asked of them. And, that, due to the lack of experience, they cannot do things well, or that they do not care about the results of their work. Likewise, I have met people who think that people older than 45 years "have already completed their cycle" and that they no longer contribute anything to the company.
These kinds of thoughts and opinions come from bad experiences, and not necessarily from what we can observe. It is a generalisation, due to something negative that was experienced in the past. However, hiring should never be done based on age. Hiring young staff has many advantages: they can be trained to do the job as the company wants it to be done, they can be taught to think or work in a certain way and usually these people are very willing to learn and be multifunctional.
Our personal experience hiring young people has been very good. One of the first assistants we hired was only 19 years old, and she was coming out of a technical school. She had very little work experience, and she had to be thought a lot. In fact, when she started working, she did not even know how to write a check. However, what she lacked in experience, she compensated with other qualities that were of great value to the company. She was always willing to do what was required, had a high commitment to the company, and she saw her work as if it were her own business. Therefore, although it was needed to invest a lot of time in teaching her, she stayed in the company for many years and her attitude was that of a mature person that never arrived late, who complied with what was promised and always gave her best. At that time, she was not married, she had no children, she lived with her parents, and yet she was very responsible.
We have also met people who do not hire personnel over a certain age, because they "bring tricks" and "they do not work as hard as they used to". Here applies exactly the same principle, and we have had the pleasure of hiring and have worked with individuals 50-60 years old, which are extremely productive and committed to the company for which they work. Hiring older staff means more experience, greater knowledge, and great skills in a certain area, due to the number of years they have spent, and the domain or talent they have acquired.
To make an effective hiring, there are definitely more relevant factors than age: productivity, capacity and commitment that the person has, for example. Real mistakes in hiring are made when the proper filters are not made in the selection process in terms of productivity and past results, and emphasis is placed on things without relevance, such as age or appearance. The mistakes are made because you do not have the knowledge and the real tools to recognize who will be a candidate who will contribute to the team and who will not.
Until production is reviewed in one person, hiring errors will continue to occur, regardless of the candidate's grand curriculum, age or experience.
It is more important to invest in learning to recognize and value the productivity and performance of a person than to pay large amounts of wages just to attract the "right" people, but in the end, they do not produce any results for the company.
Hire a capable, productive person with the required demonstrated skills. Do not make your hiring based on a curriculum, age, sex and / or years of experience, as these are not the determining factors in making your decision. Hire a productive person, who is really capable of carrying out the work, independently of all factors other than what is really important: their results.
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