11. Little White Lies

It was once a woman's prerogative to lie about her age. But these days it's an offence that could lead to the person who lied being fired from her job. You may have missed the news that a West Australian magistrate was dismissed for having pretended to be younger than she was. In 1987, when Deborah Bennett-Borlase was really 53, she claimed on an application form for a magistrate's job to be 46.

However, it is perfectly understandable why middle-aged job seekers pretend to be younger than they are. State anti-discrimination laws have not helped the mature-aged worker. And there is no federal law banning age discrimination. Employer prejudice is undiminished and deeply entrenched despite endless criticism.

Employers are wrong to assume a link between age and performance. Heavy manual jobs may be an exception. But in general, research consistently shows there's more variation in performance within age groups than across them.

When polled recently by the University of New South Wales' Michael Bittman, 1 000 employers revealed no general preference for qualities typically associated with youth. For example, they wanted intelligent, reliable team players, and when given paired options, preferred "calm and thorough" workers to the "energetic and enthusiastic" and "team players" to the "ambitious and independent".

In the end, however, pure age discrimination won out, with a lot of the employers basing their final hiring decisions on age. Only 11 per cent of the candidates they hired in the previous year were aged over 45, and nearly half the firms had no one on staff older than 55.

Employers are busy people and when they screen job applicants, they lack the time and money to assess people on the basis of merit. Influenced by the culture, they look for quick screening methods and the evidence is clear that age is a key screening device.

It is amazing how often mature-aged workers provide employers with the ammunition they need. Melbourne academic Lyn Bennington, an expert on age discrimination, has found that the mature-aged job-seeker underestimates the virulence of age prejudice and actually believes employers have a right to know their date of birth. Legally, there is no requirement to furnish this information in a CV, or give any other clues to age, such as the year they finished school or university. It is not even advisable for the mature-aged to give a full account of their long employment history; lopping off a decade of job experience is probably sensible.

Yet most people, Bennington found, truthfully proffered all the information employers needed to screen them out at first base.

It would be harsh to call the honest mature-aged job-seekers "their own worse enemy". Naive and trusting, more like it. They are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Employers may make their own assumptions in the absence of information about a candidate's age. Yet if job-seekers can get past this first hurdle, to the interview stage, half the battle is won.

In most states, including New South Wales, it is illegal for employers or a third party, such as a headhunter, to ask a job-seeker's age.

But the situation is a mockery. Employers have their ways and means of getting the information. And their chances of being reported to an anti-discrimination board are minimum. Bennington found hardly any of the job-seekers who were asked their age complained to anyone, including a union. Many workers also appear to believe the propaganda that age influences performance, or that it is pointless to fight the system.

To lie outright is not a good idea. But given how the cards are stacked against the mature-aged, it is unsurprising that some try to avoid telling the truth. Aging gracefully is getting hard to do. For the mature-aged the job market is cruel. All the onus is on them to be honourable.

But employers can fib with impunity. They can tell the older job-seekers they are "overqualified" or "have too much experience" and get away with it.