Ask any CIO or tech CEO about their top challenges, and you’ll hear replies about skills gaps and talent shortages, especially in software development, data science, and cybersecurity. One obvious solution to this would be to retrain existing staff in the workforce, who often possess years of experience and institutional knowledge. These workers might be […]
Ask any CIO or tech CEO about their top challenges, and you’ll hear replies about skills gaps and talent shortages, especially in software development, data science, and cybersecurity.
One obvious solution to this would be to retrain existing staff in the workforce, who often possess years of experience and institutional knowledge.
These workers might be transitioning from another sector or switching from non-tech roles within the same firm. One stumbling block however, especially in the tech industry, appears to be age.
Many of these ‘mid-career’ workers are aged over 40 and the stats show the existence of anyone over the age of 45 in tech is a rare sighting indeed, particularly in entry-level roles.
US figures put the average age of a tech worker as 34.6 against a general figure of 42.3. In the UK, just over a fifth of IT workers are understood to be over 50. In India, this is even more stark, with under 2.5% of IT workers estimated to be over 50.
Comparatively, sectors like healthcare are more age-inclusive, with over a third (36%) of registered nurses aged 55 or over.
Mona Mourshed, founding CEO of employment non-profit Generation, whose role is to train and place adults of all ages in new careers, confirms the resistance of tech employers in considering mature applicants.
“Healthcare and green jobs are more open to mid-career workers – and in fact, in Europe we’ve had success in countries like Spain with over 60% of our applicants being mid-career and achieving 96% job placement within three months,” she says.
“In tech this is harder. Employers say that they are finding only 15% of candidates over the age of 45 are ‘fit for purpose’ at interview stage,” she adds.
Perceived biases
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD, when her organisation asked employers why they decided to discount older applicants, the prevailing narrative was that mid-careers were just not as seen as fluid at learning new skills.
“They believe, incorrectly, that mid-careers are less likely to learn technologies and use them or learn new processes or will fail to adapt,” she says.
Mourshed knows first-hand that this isn’t true. Generation has mixed age classes, “because the workforce and the workplace at large – are intergenerational.”
She adds: “So, our mid-career learners and younger learners are all in the same class. We see the exact same performance in class between and across age groups.”
Mona Mourshed, founding CEO of employment non-profit Generation
In surveys that Generation has undertaken, of the managers who had hired people aged 55 to 65 years old, almost 90% of them said their older workers performed as well as or better than their younger employees — and 86% said older workers learned as quickly as or quicker than younger hires.
Since 2015, Mourshed’s Washington DC-based organisation – which works in over 17 countries – has retrained 115,000 graduates in 40 professions. Most achieve an 80% job placement after three months; 90% at six months and, combined, this alumnus has so far earned $1bn in wages.
The organisation offers courses (one of which enabled an Uber driver retrain as entry-level software developer) that typically last between 12 to 14 weeks followed by a focus on landing job placements.
It’s at this crucial placement stage, however, where mature graduates are up against it, and several interventions are necessary to move the needle and counter preconceived biases that over 40s just can’t hack the pace, Mourshed claims.
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One tactic has been urging employers to consider skills/demonstration-based interviews which uncover an applicant’s core competencies.
“That way, employers can see the tech portfolio of our graduates and engage with them in discussions about why they chose to code in a certain way or, if it’s a digital marketing role, why they used a certain method to construct a campaign,” she says.
Another intervention has been salary co-sharing to mitigate what some employers perceive as the ‘risk’ of taking on a mid-career employee in an entry-level job.
Generation has worked with government agencies in territories such as Singapore to put incentives in place to share the cost of the salary for a mid-career employee for their first year as an incentive to hire differently. “Ultimately no one gets blamed for hiring the 21-year-old graduate with a computer science degree if it doesn’t work out. If you take a perceived risk.
“With a mid-career who doesn’t have that degree that is STEM-affiliated that is much risker – even if they demonstrate the same skills. And that’s what we’re up against.”
Experience vs tech fluidity
Mourshed adds that mid-career switchers can also help themselves by focussing less on their experience and more on their ability to learn new skills.
Anyone over forty might find it disheartening to learn that research by Generation and the OECD has found that tech employers value five years of worth of experience almost as much as they do 25 years.
“Because if you are in a role where the tech is fast evolving your ability to learn that new tech becomes critical to being able to perform in the role.
“That ability to show how you can adapt and learn new things becomes very important and so is being able to establish yourself in a new role – we place our grads in job placements so this might happen- and demonstrating through the interviews that you are able to quickly learn is absolutely crucial.”
Otherwise, she adds, over 50s who are out of work may find themselves in a situation where they may be unemployed for the next two years “because of these biases that exist”.
According to Mourshed, there aren’t currently enough employers adapting a skills-based hiring approach, although companies she singles out for doing a good job include Workday and IBM.
Generation switch
So, how does Generation ‘sell’ the advantages of hiring this way and persuade firms to consider midlife transitioners?
Perhaps the very fact that an individual is considering switching roles should be viewed as a positive, much of the financial risk, after all, is taken by the transitioner who may have to sacrifice a drop in pay to achieve their new career choice (some firms help with this, adds Mourshed, but it varies from territory to territory).
Mixed aged cohort of grads from Generation’s French programme
Starting from scratch starting at an entry-level role, she adds, requires “a confidence and willingness to change and adapt”.
She adds: “Like most sectors, tech is a team sport that requires that you engage with others, use strong judgement and other soft skills that are about more than just coding.
“What we hear from our employers is that for the behavioural skills, resilience and perseverance our mid-career grads outperformed those who come through the traditional hiring process.”
In some geographies, such as Southeast Asia, retraining and upskilling employees have also become a necessity because there simply aren’t enough STEM graduates.
Demographic and social shifts are also reshaping attitudes in Europe and Asia – on top of a falling birth rate, state pension ages are rising as is our ability and willingness to be productive for longer and afford the things we like to do.
Forty over forty?
Mourshed, who is of Egyptian heritage, initially started her training initiatives following the Arab Spring, which was partially driven by the very high youth unemployment rate.
Her focus switched to mature workers in 2018 when she realised that 40% of the long-term unemployed were over the age of 40.
Ironically, her intergenerational training and reskilling efforts have brought her to the attention of media lists that tend to revere youth in the workplace.
Mourshed is a former Fortune 40 under 40 list (when she was 39) as McKinsey’s first female elected partner and global education lead at the firm’s Middle East office.
Doesn’t she think lists like this just make anyone over the age of 39 feel like over-the-hill, underachieving losers?
“Those lists are relevant to a very small number of people,” she laughs. “But I’m seeing an increasing number of lists with over 50s in them – Forbes now has a 50 over 50.
“Or maybe it’s because I’m over 50 I’m just starting to notice them more! Either way, it’s a realisation that a rising number of us are going to be working well past 50 or 60 and that we want to work, it’s still and important part of our lives and our economic mobility.”
