2024-08-26 15:04:18
Nine out of ten senior executives believe their age puts them at a disadvantage in job hunting, reveals study APEC survey released in January 2022Age stereotypes are indeed still very prevalent in the workplace, and talent is often associated with young people. Faced with this situation, the professional experience of senior managers is one of their main assets. This experience is the accumulation of countless situations experienced, difficulties solved, successes recorded, and mistakes overcome. This experience also provides a different perspective on work practices and organizations, which is an important source of potential enrichment for the company.
In fact, professional experience is widely viewed as an asset by recruiters. A recent survey of 851 working professionalsexperience in the field of activity would be the best predictor of career success for a recruited candidate (48% of respondents), ahead of role playing, personality tests, education level, opinions or recommendations based on interviews and references. These results support many of the other results. Therefore, for Chamkhi and Lainé, they analyzed Responses to a large survey of employers Pôle emploi said 37% of employers considered professional experience in this or a similar occupation essential, while 52% found it useful. Employers’ attraction to experience is particularly strong for senior management positions.
From experience to skills
However, most scientific research is cautious at best about the predictive power of professional experience in hiring. It’s old research. In terms of the comparative predictive validity of different selection criteria, professional experience ranks second to last, between graphology and unstructured interviews and well behind situational tests and structured interviews. More recently, a meta-analysis published in 2019 highlighted that acquired professional experience is absolutely not a good predictor of success in terms of basic assessments (amount or duration of experience). The candidate’s future performance in a new position related to this experienceThe authors explain these counterintuitive results by referring to the specificities of the work environment.
In an article Labor and Employment MagazineStéphane Bellini suggests other reasons for the devaluation of professional experience among older people: technology that simplifies work, the increasing rate at which technical skills become obsolete, the impact of versatility, all of which are well known. But let’s focus on the reasons related to learning from experience:
“The wealth of skills gained through experience depends on the transformation of the individual through experience. To the extent that they reflect, i.e. question their work, procedures and goals of action, individuals will be able to benefit from their experience. Therefore, it is not the time spent in a position that constitutes a rich experience, but the reflective analysis carried out by the employee. »
The value of predecessors
Therefore, experience itself is not important, what is important is the skills we gain by taking a step back from that experience. To be a real asset, experience must be able to be broken down into skills and valued by employers. The problem is not knowing how to describe what you did, but being able to identify the skills we have acquired and how we can implement them in another context. This is what will ultimately make senior personnel valuable to employers.
Of course, it emphasizes both purely technical skills and soft skills. Tools exist to facilitate the transition from experience to competence, methods to describe behavior in past situations, Popularized by the abbreviation “STAR” Yes 1. Occupational psychologists are trained to support this kind of reflective work, and carrying out skills assessments can also provide support.
Traumatic Experience
But unfortunately, in some cases, this experience that older people have can represent a burden that people should be able to put down in order to effectively plan the rest of their career. This experience can become a burden when it is very negative. Harassment, overload, burnout, nonsense, poor working conditions or relationships, cruel dismissal… These bad experiences, sometimes even traumatic, can make a person overly suspicious and demanding of employers and of work itself. This defensive posture is completely understandable and natural, but it can seriously affect the job search.
Besides being a self-limiting attitude when applying, this attitude can easily come across in job interviews and cause concern for employers. APEC 2023 Articulate: 52% of executives feel their workload is insurmountable; 40% report feeling frustrated, and 16% of senior managers are anxious about their career pursuits, feel threatened, and report Loss of meaning in work.
Paradoxically, when this experience is positive, it can also become a burden. In fact, the relative comfort gained over the years in the previous position through perfectly mastered activities, in a well-known context, finally reaching a salary commensurate with seniority, all this in the face of the risk of having to face new situations.
Nevertheless, a survey conducted by the SNC Association on 760 unemployed seniors (more than half of whom were executives) showed that 67% of respondents agreed to return to an activity with a lower salary than their previous job, 60% of whom considered retraining and more than 40% They also said they were ready to change their work location..
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Opening up a realm of possibilities
Introspection of one’s own expectations and basic needs, and even mourning past situations, can be particularly useful for positive change and opening up areas of possibility. This involves questioning what researcher Eléonore Marbot says The early feeling that your career is about to end This can lead to people disengaging from their work and refocusing on themselves. In general, older people, like everyone else, or even more than everyone else, must avoid being isolated in their efforts and, instead, seek external support (environment, professional networks, career development consultants, support groups, etc.). For senior managers, who are used to projecting a great deal of autonomy and even omnipotence, this process of seeking help is understandably not easy, but often necessary.
Exploring the realm of possibilities may also involve different activities: trainer, consultant, temporary manager, as well as forms of work outside traditional salaried employment: specialized temporary work for executives, senior fixed-term contracts, statutory independent work, wage portering, time-sharing.
But all this does not absolve businesses of their responsibilities. Understanding how to employ and manage the employment of older people is a skill that companies must develop Their employability. This is related to their social responsibility, but more importantly to their economic performance.
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