Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you
- Reference: 1659421925
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/08/02/ageist_job_ads/
- Source link:
The research – conducted by Ian Burn (University of Liverpool, UK), Daniel Firoozi, Daniel Ladd and David Neumark (UC Irvine, US) – is described in [1]a paper titled, "Help Really Wanted? The Impact of Age Stereotypes in Job Ads on Applications from Older Workers," distributed via America's National Bureau of Economic Research.
"We find strong evidence that ageist language related to communication skills, physical ability, and technology skills, even when it is not blatantly or specifically age-related, deters older workers from applying for jobs," the paper argues. "Job ads that feature ageist language attract younger applicants on average than job ads that do not feature ageist language."
[2]
The authors conclude that job-ad language has about the same effect as direct discrimination in hiring – such as rejecting job applications from anyone over a certain age.
[3]
[4]
However, the researchers observe that the effect of discouraging older people to apply for jobs doesn't show up in the analysis of corporate hiring practices – non-applicants don't get counted. This has implications for how companies write job ads and how policymakers assess discriminatory behavior.
An age-old tech problem
Claims of age discrimination are common among technology companies. IBM is alleged to have laid off [5]as many as 100,000 employees from 2015 through 2019 as part of a global effort to de-age its workforce. Google [6]paid $11 million in 2019 to resolve an age discrimination lawsuit brought on behalf of 227 people, and then faced [7]another age discrimination claim two months later.
Similar allegations have been made [8]against Apple . Between 2012 and 2016, there were [9]at least 90 age discrimination lawsuits against Silicon Valley companies.
According to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), a nonprofit advocacy group, [10]78 percent of older workers say they've experienced discrimination in the workplace. That represents the highest level since the organization began tracking that data in 2003.
[11]
In a phone interview with The Register , David Neumark, professor of economics at UC Irvine, co-director of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy, and a co-author of the paper, explained that this study flips a [12]previous study [PDF] from 2019 on its head.
In that project, Neumark, Burn, and Patrick Button (Tulane, RAND Corporation) sent out 40,000 job applications and found "robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women" in terms of job applicants who received responses.
[13]Intel laid me off for being too old, engineer claims in lawsuit
[14]Google age discrimination case: Supervisor called me 'grandpa', engineer claims
[15]HP Inc, HPE both slapped with racism, ageism lawsuit
[16]How a Facebook post by blabbermouth daughter cost her parents $80,000
The latest research takes the opposite approach by creating fake jobs ads derived from actual job ad text and documenting the demographics of those who respond.
"The question this paper is about is why?" explained Neumark. "Why would an employer run an ad with ageist language? The most obvious reason would be that when you discriminate, you can get caught by people like me who do this kind of work, both as an academic and as a consultant on discrimination cases, by treating people disproportionately. If you can actually drive down the number of older applicants from the group you hire from, you don't have to do that."
The study does not examine actual employer behavior, despite its reliance on job-ad language from real employers. The fake job ads presented and evaluated were assembled with the help of a machine learning algorithm designed to generate phrases that are semantically similar to ageist stereotypes but aren't obvious.
[17]
"What our evidence does address is whether age stereotypes expressed in job ads affect the likelihood that older job seekers apply for jobs, likely by signaling to job applicants that older workers are less likely to be hired," the paper states.
Truth in data?
Neumark acknowledges that you cannot see intent in data.
"But we know three things," he said. "We know from the first study [in 2019] that [employers] actually discriminate – those were rigorous experimental measures of discrimination, because they see résumés that have nothing different about them except age, and they prefer the younger folks."
"The same employers who behave that way actually used more stereotyped language. And here we see that that language discourages older workers from applying."
It's possible to construct an explanation for these findings that don't involve discriminatory intent, Neumark says, but he cites the maxim of [18]Occam's Razor to support his contention that they're related.
Neumark believes machine learning will prove useful for flagging discriminatory language in job ads by offering a neutral measurement mechanism. And others appear to be thinking along similar lines. Neumark said he presented his findings in a seminar in Brussels and was told that there's already a tool called the [19]gender decoder being used to evaluate job ads for gender bias.
The paper argues that the research findings should encourage the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to expand its guidance on the wording of job ads.
"Using language that explicitly deters older workers from applying is already illegal under the ADEA, but the subtler usage of ageist language that we study suggests that job-ad language that would not be flagged as explicitly illegal can still have pernicious effects on older workers in the labor market, and possibly facilitate age discrimination," the paper concludes. ®
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[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w30287
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Yuj12@d0nRpOJYWTVgQEYgAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yuj12@d0nRpOJYWTVgQEYgAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yuj12@d0nRpOJYWTVgQEYgAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/01/ibm_fired_100000_staff/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/22/google_settles_discrimination/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/17/google_age_discrimination_santa_clara_case/
[8] https://norcalrecord.com/stories/576665058-apple-executive-accused-of-bullying-out-older-employees-for-young-talent-in-recent-lawsuit
[9] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/22/90-age-discrimination-suits-reflect-growing-issue-tech/93110594/
[10] https://www.aarp.org/research/topics/economics/info-2021/older-workers-new-skills-covid-19-pandemic.html
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Yuj12@d0nRpOJYWTVgQEYgAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.economics.uci.edu/~dneumark/JPE%20paper.pdf
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/30/intel_age_discrimination/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/17/google_age_discrimination_santa_clara_case/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2017/07/25/hp_hpe_sued_discrimination/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2014/03/01/facebook_post_by_mouthy_daughter_costs_florida_parents_80000/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/bootnotes&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Yuj12@d0nRpOJYWTVgQEYgAAAEw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html
[19] https://gender-decoder.katmatfield.com/
[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: So?
"I really don't want to go on a recruitment merry-go-round only to then discover that the environment is just not for me."
It sounds as if this research put numerous people on a recruitment merry-go-round for jobs that didn't even exist, all to prove the bleedin' ovious. What did their Universities' ethics committees make of that one? Why does it remind me of that research project submitting bad pull requests to Linux?
Don't know about that
But at 56 I find I spend increasingly more time sorting out younger colleagues appalling written cruft. and it's not like even they can understand each other.
It's all high jinks until your spec is for all intents and purposes useless.
Re: Don't know about that
colleagues'
Re: Don't know about that
appallingly-written cruft. And
Examples?
It would be useful to show some examples of what the ageist vs non-ageist language is.
Re: Examples?
Not least so one can avoid the apparently subconscious pitfalls..
I'm also not sure that when given 2 CVs that are otherwise identical apart from one being 50 and ther other 20 that it's really unreasonable to prefer the younger one who has apparently done as much with their life as the older in less than half the time.
Re: Examples?
Well, one example is that it's "two CVs" not "2 CVs". The latter is a car.
Re: Examples?
In Portugal, there's a phrase that's repeated verbatim in about half the job advertisements I see:
Integration into a young and dynamic team
I think it simply means "must be biddable", but it sounds dreadful. And that, no doubt, is the point.
Re: Examples?
"Young and dynamic team" is HR-speech for: "bunch of rookies, fired at slightest offense" Most probably including a shitload of unpaid/unrecorded overtime
Re: Examples?
Indeed.
I downloaded the paper. This is an example of the job posting they created for Retail Sales Associate (page 35 of 59) :
" Our women’s clothing store in *City* is looking for a sales associate to help us out weekday afternoons.
We are pretty busy store and you must *Physical Requirement* . We are looking for someone with open
to working in retail, who *Communication Skill Requirement* . We need you to *Technology
Requirement*. So if this sounds like you, send us your resume and your earliest possible starting date
and we will be in touch "
Apart from the glaring spelling and writing mistakes, I stared at that for a few seconds until I understood that they used *Physical Requirement* (etc) as a variable, to be filled in at posting time, I guess.
So I went and looked for their list of physical requirements. On page 46, I found a table that seemed promising, but their "control" text was like : "You must be good at working without supervision".
What's ageist in that ?
Re: Examples?
"What's ageist in that ?"
It probably discriminates in favour of older workers so not really a good control. Syill, probably close enough for economists.
Re: Examples?
"You must be good at working without supervision".
No PHB? Sign me up.
News reports about de-ageing the workforce got followed by news reports of productivity issues. Clearly I need a posher job title and a huge pay rise to not see the connection.
Not New News
The older I get, the more I have noticed this language.
"Would you like to work in a fast paced, changing environment where using your own initiative is important?"
Translates to:
"Would you like to work in an agency who doesn't believe in hiring the correct amount of people to do the job, where deadlines are unrealistic, yet have to be balanced between new work and firefighting existing customer sites without any real management because we don't believe in proper management"
And given I'm nearly 20 years in the industry, the older I get, the less I want to work for these sweatshops.
Re: Not New News
s/we don't believe in/we're crap at/
"The question this paper is about is why?" explained Neumark. "Why would an employer run an ad with ageist language?
Follow. The. Money.
>The latest research takes the opposite approach by creating fake jobs ads derived from actual job ad text and documenting the demographics of those who respond.<
So it is fine to offer a non existing job and waste the time and effort people looking for a job put into applying if it is done in the name of science?
Anon CVs
I dislike it when people pad their CVs with irrelevant details, such as their age (+ hobbies, etc)
Since my company moved to anonymous CVs¹ I've had some great hires that otherwise would have probably been discarded, such as a lawyer whose lifelong dream was to be a software developer (!?) and ran circles around other guys with the same amount of dev experience.
Part of it might be that we chuck in the bin any CVs where people could not be bothered to follow some simple rules. No identifying information means no identifying information. It doesn't mean slap your picture next to your name, DOB and home address at the top your CV. We also ask people to create anonymous email aliases.
¹ In part because it looks good these days but this was actually driven by the security guys who wanted to minimise the amount of info that would get leaked if / when we get breached. We don't have to protect what we don't have in the first place.
Re: Anon CVs
How does that work with listing previous experience and education? Somebody who went to uni in the 1980s isn't going to be under 30. If you remove the dates, somebody with two degrees is likely to be older than somebody with one, somebody with 10 previous contracts is likely to be older than somebody with five. My CV includes a list of published work, that would have to be stripped out, removing some valuable information.
Re: Anon CVs
> How does that work with listing previous experience and education?
The (work, not academic) CV is just a tool to make first contact. For me, the ideal CV is one with a couple of sentences explaining roughly what you can do for us and showing that you understand both our needs and your capabilities.
Though I can't stop people from sticking to their old habits and many do, personally I don't expect to see dates listed along with your academic achievements¹ and we ask people to indicate their level of experience in general terms with anything over six years being "experienced".
¹ Some people take it a bit too literally and at least one guy omitted any mention of his academic qualifications altogether… including his PhD.
Isn't "they prefer the younger folks" another way of saying "they prefer inexperienced incompetants"? That explains a lot.
> Isn't "they prefer the younger folks" another way of saying "they prefer inexperienced incompetants"?
Incompetents.
Bit necessarily. It's just an euphemism for "the pay is shit, apply only if you're really desperate".
So?
"We find strong evidence that ageist language related to communication skills, physical ability, and technology skills, even when it is not blatantly or specifically age-related, deters older workers from applying for jobs," the paper argues. "Job ads that feature ageist language attract younger applicants on average than job ads that do not feature ageist language."
Ageist language such as: must have good communication skills (able to write coherent sentences without emojis), must have physical ability to get off arse to fix a problem, and must have a wide range of technology skills rather than just a few months of the latest fads?
Actually, I don't mind ageist flags in job ads, or any other ists for that matter - it gives me an impression of the working environment without going through the rigmarole of applying and being interviewed. I really don't want to go on a recruitment merry-go-round only to then discover that the environment is just not for me.