Help wanted: Companies that can write job ads that don't discriminate against workers over 50

MW Help wanted: Companies that can write job ads that don't discriminate against workers over 50

By Jessica Hall

'It's ageism - which is just bias in a cheap suit'

Ageism is harder to prove following a 2009 Supreme Court decision.

Help-wanted advertisements with buzzwords like "energetic," "fast-paced," "digital native" and "fresh perspectives" abound. But these potentially ageist descriptors are problematic at best - and illegal at worst.

Colleen Paulson is a career consultant and the founder of Ageless Careers, which works with people in their 40s and older. She recalled one example last year of a Fortune 500 company laying off a round of senior staffers, while at the same time advertising jobs on LinkedIn specifically for early-career talent.

"Usually we don't see it so overt," Paulson said. "That's an extreme example, but there are other subtle things that we see. Words like 'energetic' can be used in job descriptions to signal that an employer is looking for younger talent."

19% of adults age 50 and older reported experiencing age discrimination in the workplace, AARP found.

"It's illegal but it's also hard to prove," Paulson said. "When you see language like 'digital native,' 'energetic' or 'fast-paced environment,' it can be clear what they're looking for in terms of younger talent. But it would be almost impossible to prove."

A recent job posting for a content creator came up short for a client who was told the company was looking more for a "Gen Z TikTok creator," Paulson said.

The focus on age bias comes as older adults are trying to work longer and delay retirement amid increased longevity and financial concerns. Yet while nearly 1 in 5 adults age 50 and older reported experiencing age discrimination in the workplace since turning 40, only 1% have ever made an official claim against an employer, according to AARP.

Taking action against such bias can be difficult. Paulson said older workers may be daunted by the potential costs, time and effort, as well as the potential stigma associated with being a whistleblower.

Proving age bias

Age discrimination faces a higher legal standard to prove than other forms of discrimination based on race or sexual orientation.

A 2009 Supreme Court decision in the case of Gross v. FBL Financial Services Inc. - in which a worker, Jack Gross, got a new role at FBL Financial that he saw as a demotion due to his age - weakened protections against age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

The ruling set a higher bar for age discrimination than for other types of discrimination, requiring plaintiffs to prove that age was the primary reason for an adverse employment action. That was a much higher standard than the previous rule, which only required that plaintiffs demonstrate that age was a motivating factor.

Last year, AARP Foundation Litigation filed a class-action lawsuit against Raytheon, now known as RTX $(RTX)$, alleging that the aerospace and defense company had refused to hire workers for positions unless the applicants were recent graduates of college or graduate school.

"Specifying 'young,' 'recent college graduate,' 'early-career professional' or 'no more than X years experience' are explicit. Many are a lot more subtle: 'digital native,' 'fresh ideas or perspectives,' 'high energy,' 'work hard, play hard,'" said Janine Vanderburg, chief executive of the Encore Roadmap and co-founder of Changing the Narrative, an advocacy group raising awareness on ageism.

"A group of researchers from the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco and other institutions did a field experiment a few years ago that showed that terms like this actually discourage older job seekers, which may be the intent, but that's hard to prove," Vanderburg noted.

To help identify ageism, Mark Dawkins, who spent more than 35 years as a technology recruiter for big companies like Microsoft $(MSFT)$, Amazon.com (AMZN) and JPMorgan Chase $(JPM)$, recently created a free AI tool that scans job listings and career pages on corporate websites, and identifies words or phrases that could be seen as controversial. The tool creates a report on the level of severity of the language and the legal cases that might come into play, as well as suggestions on how to fix the troublesome wording.

"It stemmed from seeing people in their mid-40s struggling to get jobs - they couldn't land interviews," Dawkins said. "It's overexperience bias. It's ageism, which is just bias in a cheap suit."

In one recent scan of U.S. job listings, a major bank listed only certain graduation dates it would consider for a two-year analyst program, while a job listing for a space-technology company used wording such as 'fast-paced,' 'high energy' and 'all-consuming' work culture that possibly signaled age preferences, Dawkins's tool found.

"Where things get into ageism is if the job ad has those subtle cues sprinkled in more than would be necessary to convey details about the job environment and preferred worker characteristics - other than age. Employers can, and do, use this as a mechanism to shape the applicant pool," said Patrick Button, an associate professor of economics at Tulane University who researches age discrimination.

A common way that many employers discriminate against older workers is by focusing their recruitment on students or recent graduates, such as by hiring from intern pools and working through college job fairs, Button said. They may also advertise their job ads in places that younger people frequent more often relative to older adults, such as by highlighting jobs on TikTok rather than Facebook, he added.

Cliches that become accepted bias

There are a lot of hiring cliches that could raise red flags when it comes to age bias.

"While there may be nothing legally wrong with 'energetic' or 'fast-paced environment,' 'digital native' may be crossing a line given that millennials were really the first cohort to be able to make that claim from birth," said Joanna Lahey, professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, and an expert on age discrimination and the relationship between age and the labor market. "That said, these other kinds of terms really do deter older job seekers from applying, and may prevent companies from hiring highly qualified workers.

"Age discrimination is real. Study after study has found that older workers, particularly women, are less likely to be called in for an interview than are equivalent or lesser qualified workers who are younger," Lahey said. She pointed out that this can result in negative consequences for the economy, which is less productive as a result, and for governments, which could have to fund the shortfall.

Still, older job seekers need to try to compete in the world as it is, biased or not. Paulson said it's usually wise to remove graduation dates from a resume, but not to erase your early career experience - especially if it has impressive name recognition or cache.

"If you have great early career experience, maybe you tell the story without using dates. Talk about the experience in the executive summary or talk about the lessons that you gained from that experience. Ageism is real, but don't completely discount your experiences," Paulson said.

She recommends that all workers have a fully filled-out LinkedIn profile.

"Recruiters can't find you without that, and 90% of recruiters use LinkedIn," Paulson said. "In this market, you need to do everything you can."

-Jessica Hall

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 10, 2025 10:00 ET (15:00 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.