Are IT departments age biased?
October 29, 2008 by Sam NarisiPosted in: IT staffing, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security and law
Companies always need to be careful about age discrimination against job applicants and employees. But are IT departments at greater risk of being accused of bias?
Workers age 55 and older make up 6.8% of the IT workforce — compared to 11.7% of the entire working world — according to a study by the Information Technology Association of America.
Is it because of bias? Not necessarily. In IT, compared to many other jobs, workers don’t stay in the field as long. That could be by choice, or it may have something to do with companies’ hiring preferences.
Given the ever-changing nature of technical work and many tech managers’ desire for creativity and innovation, IT departments can sometimes lean too far to the younger workers.
HR can help by training IT hiring managers and giving guidance in the hiring process to make sure the most qualified applicants are hired, regardless of age.
Also, companies could retain older, more experienced workers for longer by providing training to help them keep their skills up-to-date.
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November 4th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I think is in amusing. How long has IT existed? IT is not accounting, which is still using double entry bookkeeping created in the 1400’s by Pacioli. IT theory reinvents itself in under 10 years. When the study “Does IT matter” was released in 2003, Bill gates and other IT heavyweights wrote article after article stating IT DOES matter contrary to the artile.
This month, attending a Microsoft seminar promoting the current Microsoft direction of SaaS and other services, such as virtualization, the same study is used to justify the fact that IT does not matter. The field itself is too young to have a bell curve of a stable environment.