Talking Age Targets Mature Job Seekers

If you're a "mature" worker living across the pond in Europe, congratulations, you have a new career portal, TalkingAge.com.

Seeking the so-called 'grey market,' the Website aims to offer career, financial, HR and social networking opportunities to elder job seekers.

According to those spry folks at TalkingAge:

"The over 65’s spend the longest amount of time online, and Internet surfers over the age of 50 account for nearly a third of all time spent online by British Web users. Significantly, nearly half of over 50’s want to work beyond retirement age, yet more than 80% have already experienced some kind of ageist rejection by employers. TalkingAge combines jobs, communities and advice for the first time to serve this increasingly crucial segment of the workforce."

Of course, targeting jobs to people of a certain age is a legal no-no, so the jobs posted are available to candidates of all ages.

Like many of the new Websites we tell you about, this one is in its infancy, and is going to rely heavily of building up a strong repository of postings.  As of this post, there are only 77 employment opportunities posted and the forum is loaded with tumbleweed.  

Let's give this one some time to grow.  And if the TalkingAge folks are looking for a freelance blogger or podcaster, I can slow down the show or write in really, really big font.

Comments

[Tim Rotchell]

Hi Andrew

Wow. Thanks for picking up on our Website!

Yes, we’re still very fresh faced and sucking our thumbs in web terms as we enter our second week.

But even tumbleweed has to grow sometime and that’s what we are doing, starting from scratch trying to provide a genuine resource for the maturer job seeker and provide them with the tools they need to help them find (and get)the jobs that they want.

We want to bring their experience back to the world of work, if they are out of it, or match them to a new challenge if they are still working.

People of all ages struggle to find jobs; those who are at the beginning of their work life just as much as those who are older, but we feel it is criminal that people are made to feel that they are ‘on the scrap heap’ just by being labelled because of their age.

That’s why we’re trying to encourage age responsible employers to use the site, not only to post their jobs, but to show how serious they are about employing a balanced workforce.

If you want to sweep up some of our tumbleweed, we’d be glad to have you contribute to the forums, or even write something for us giving your perspective from your side of the briny.

Employment age legislation has been around for a lot longer stateside than it has here. What effect is it having and are older workers getting a fairer crack of the whip as a result?

Let us know and drop us a line at TalkingAge.com.