A Senior Citizen Trying to Find A Job In Today’s World
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February 26, 2024

A Senior Citizen Trying to Find A Job In Today’s World

Today you hear a lot about the job market and how hard it is to find acceptable employees that want to work. From my perspective it’s all a lie. I have been looking for employment and it seems that companies are not interested in someone with experience or knowledge. It’s more like no older help wanted, experience not wanted, knowledge not wanted, caucasians not wanted. What has happened to the job world?

Today’s job market treats you like you are just a barcode, no human interaction exists because of AI (Artificial Intelligence). What is wrong with face to face interviews? I remember when you were to looking for a job years ago you went to businesses filled out an application and you spoke to the manager to introduce yourself. Today it is all done online and you have to answer assessment questions before you are able to talk to a live person. If you answer the assessment questions wrong you never get a response or reply. You are at the mercy of AI. I actually had someone tell me to use to AI fill in the job application and assessments because AI is reading it and it would know what type of answers to supply. What kind of stupidity is this? I am looking for the job not AI. How is that being honest or original. Is that what we are to become mindless boobs that need to follow and use AI for everything we do including trying to gain employment?

Trying to find a job over the last few years showed me skills, experience and knowledge are of no use in today’s market. All our training, experience and knowledge were in industries that are no longer needed or exist. The only reason older people get jobs is because of a referral. The last job I had at a mini storage facility was because the live-in manager got to know me over the years. The owner actually said she would never have hired me if it wasn’t for the manager’s recommendation. Companies are not interested in what you knew or what you did. For senior citizens it’s who you know, no referral means no job.

Today you want to hold onto privacy but that is no longer allowed because companies want all your information to apply. Do they protect the data you are providing? Who knows, you are at the mercy of their hiring policies. What they say may not be what they do. Some companies ask questions like, are you vaccinated and boosted? Are you willing to wear a mask the entire length of your shift and on company property? Is this so they can segregate employees by vaccination status. Health information use to be private between and individual and their doctor. Not anymore. Employment agencies ask about vaccination status and say our clients want to ensure the safety of coworkers and customers so they prefer only vaccinated referrals. I remember history when they segregated individuals by race and religion. Is this type of segregation coming back to the job market, vaccinated or unvaccinated?

Some employment agencies say you need to speak Spanish to be considered by their clients. We are in the United States and as long as I can remember English was the primary language, not Spanish. All of this use to be illegal but it is all in the open now because there is a war on caucasian and older people looking for employment especially in California.

Driving around looking for help wanted signs in the area lead you nowhere. Once I was actually able to fill out an application at a business and I could hear it being torn up as I was walking out the door. Another place had a sign that said, “Inquire Within” and when I went inside I was told to apply online. They described what positions were available but said they only accepted applications online.

What people say are not the way things happen. It is a different world especially if you do not want to use big tech to find a job. On one online job sight the first question asked when you try to sign up is, “What are your preferred pronouns?” What the hell does that mean? A lot of the small shops are not hiring and quite a few of them are going out of business. The one’s that are hiring do not want to hire people older than 60 because they feel there will be too much time off for medical reasons. That is understandable but it is still wrong.

Another reason experience no longer matters because you have to be licensed, certified or registered for everything you do today. The older we are the harder it is to get the certification and license. You need to take courses because they only consider recent experience. Courses can be two years or longer for certification and are expensive. It is definitely a young person’s world for any type of certification or licensing.

As a senior citizen looking for a job in today’s world is definitely eye opening. It almost seems like the world has passed us by and is not interested in anything we have done in the past. It also could be that a lot of the current companies are not interested in the Baby Boomer generation. It could be part of the Boomer, Generation X and Millennial feud that has been going on for the last few years. All the above is not an excuse but it explains what is happening in the job market today and where we stand at this point. Senior citizens are individuals, not barcodes that can be scanned by a computer. We have knowledge and experience, maybe that is why companies do not want to hire us because we are able to think for ourselves.


That’s An Old Timer’s Opinion.

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