Career

How do you handle a 25-year-old HR in a job interview?

I hear negative feedback from a lot of my middle-aged clients about the young staff interviewing them. Since the road leads to many jobs through them, here is a 3-point user guide for them:

It is undeniable that there are many young people among the professionals who make the selection. There are several reasons for this. One is that recruiting and interviewing is a very hard job. Anyone who works for a company in the HR field will try to transfer to another field after recruitment, such as training or HR projects, organizational development, etc.

How do you handle a 25-year-old HR in a job interview?
How do you handle a 25-year-old HR in a job interview?

The consequence of this will be to entrust the “culinary work” – finding candidates, selecting CVs, and the first round of interviews – to young HR staff with recent graduates or a few years of experience. They are still happy to do it.

This can lead to the strange situation of a 25-year-old deciding the fate and suitability of a candidate aged 40-50-55 with serious life and professional experience.

3 tips on how to handle this job interview:

1) Don’t judge by age!

Perhaps this is one of the most important rules. Because if you don’t want to be judged by your age, you can’t do the same. There are certainly some among the young staff who are not (yet) suitable for the job. But there are many who do the work entrusted to them at a very high level, even at such a young age.

The point is not to judge first, because it will inadvertently have a negative effect on your entire attitude and radiation during the job interview!

2) Treat the HR employee as a partner!

Whether you are interviewing at an employment agency or directly at your employer, the road to your job is often through a 25-year-old staff member. Treat him as an equal partner, because if you like, he is your agent. This is especially true for job brokers: if they have already been called for a job interview, they are also interested in filling the job as soon as possible.

However, in order for him to be able to sell you to the outsourcing employer or to a professional manager within the company, you need to know, that you need to win for yourself. Because if you can achieve that, he will be arguing with you why you should be employed even though you are already 45 or 50 years old.

3) Don’t look for mistakes, help him!

God, how many outbursts have I heard from clients, and readers, that HR doesn’t even understand the job you’re looking for ?! This is certainly the case even with more experienced staff, not to mention young people.

Instead of making her feel disapproved of her, help her more! Help her by explaining the subtleties of the profession and helping her understand the job in detail! But you will be very grateful for that, and so you can make him your follower.

The biggest reservation for middle-aged people is often that they will not be able to fit into the company’s much younger workforce. If you assign or treat a young HR employee in a job interview, you are supporting precisely this negative bias.

Adapt to the situation!

Age discrimination is undeniably present in the labor market. But this is not the fault of the 25-30-year-old staff. Don’t overdo the situation by allowing room for the generational difference between you! Try to treat it as a partner, because it is in your best interests!

I know it’s hard. But look: you don’t send a young doctor to a warmer climate when you’re dealing with him. He is a doctor even if he has just passed the exam. You rely on your expertise because most of them aren’t where you happen to be.

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