According to Petrostat (Department of Federal State Statistics Service of Russian Federation in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region), retirees account for some 26% of population in St. Petersburg, which is over 1.3 mln. Following the increase of the retirement age, the official number of retirees will reduce. However, the elderly people will remain as they are, and they will have to make more efforts to find a job or to hold down the old one. HR managers believe that making an impression on an employer and disproving the stereotypes is a priority for a person nearing retirement age who is willing to be employed. Therefore the people of pre-retirement age are recommended to enhance professional relations in their field rather than obtain a new profession. As well as to take care of their health and look fashionable.
Many senior citizens now find job due to the fact that their professions are rare and unpopular with the young. For instance, almost every garment manufacturer complains of lack of human resources and hires employees aged 50+ with Soviet education; the same goes for welders. In small and medium-sized businesses, the average age of the employees largely depends on the age and stereotypes of the boss, rather than on the situation on the labour market. Thus, if the company’s owner believes that “education used to be of better quality in the past”, it will recruit people above 50. But this will hardly work with a young startupper.
The market is mainly driven by large business, and there is not much to be happy about for would-be retirees. According to the results of the Public Opinion Foundation survey, in 2014, 43% of at-home retirees said they stayed at home as no one hired them, not at will. Some 23% of them would rather change their profession and learn something new, but they see no job prospects. According to the Public Opinion Foundation, women keep working after retirement more often than men in 58% of cases. Men: in 43%. According to employers’ expectations, this indicator will also grow despite the potential increase of the retirement age, as those aged 45-60 include many of those who have worked for “under-the-table” salary for the bulk of their life, and eventually their pension will equal (or equals) no more than 10,000-15,000 roubles.
BDO Unicon Outsourcing HR Department Deputy Director, Zulfiya Yupashevskaya says that the situation for the elderly could improve in the nearest years: those born between 1990-2000have entered the labour market. This was the time of demographic pitfall, and representatives of this generation will not be sufficient to fill all positions. She believes that even people above 45 years old face job search problems, but the problem is largely due to employers’ stereotypes, rather than skills and education of the former. The latter believe that senior candidates have less teamwork skills, are not ready to learn, are bad at negotiations and do not have knowledge of information technologies. Therefore it is impossible to predict what senior candidates should learn. Zulfiya Yupashevskaya recommends that they focus on their appearance, health and professional relations: since the point is the stereotypes rather than competencies, they will have to disprove them. A wide network of contacts will enable them to receive invitations rather than search for vacancies.
She says that at BDO Unicon Outsourcing, people above 45 account for some 15% and people above 55 - for 5% of employees. They are offered positions of consultants and methodologists most often.
According to HeadHunter survey results, only 9% of employees of Russian companies are people above 45, with more than 50% being aged between 25 and 35. The bulk of those 9% are the people that have been long working for the company; new elderly employees are only hired in 25% of cases. HeadHunter experts note that, referring to job search, the employees above 45 are most afraid of the impossibility to find better offers than the existing ones. In 67% of cases, the source of apprehension for candidates is their own experience rather than their friends’ stories or articles.
“My father, who is 56, was made redundant in a large foreign company (a US holding acquired its parent company, and they changed managers in every country), Alla from St. Petersburg says. After that he was unemployed for 15 months. He took part in dozens of interviews and sent hundreds of job applications, including even with the help of a recruiting agency, but he was refused everywhere. Sometimes employers directly explained that the reason was the age, but more often they did not mention the reason. However, the recruiting agency informed him that he should be prepared for an extensive search: many candidates of his age were in the same situation.” Eventually, he got the job, but in a different area (in shipbuilding instead of energy and with a lower income than before downsizing). Let alone field experts or top executives, job search for people above 50 often results in a switch to unskilled jobs. For example, 68-year-old resident of St. Petersburg Alexey used to be a lecturer in a private university; now he is a watchman in a business centre. “I failed to find a job in my field, and it was made clear at the interviews that I was wasting time,” he says. “My age is not fit for obtaining a new profession, therefore I opted for this variant, which is not so bad.”
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HeadHunter: according to the company’s survey data, there are only 7% above 46 and 1% above 55 among those already working and obtaining online education. Some 74% of online students are people under 35, they are most often engaged in sales or the IT sphere. The most in-demand course is English, every third respondent of HeadHunter is taking or would like to take this course. The survey confirms the fact noticed by HR managers: people tend to improve their communication or management skills rather than obtain a new profession or some fundamental knowledge. People learn time management, personal performance and networking in the hope of making an impression on the employer.
Age discrimination in labour is the problem typical not only for Russia. In the early 2018, The New York Times and ProPublica revealed that several dozens of major US companies make job advertisements visible only for users under 36 years old. Those included Amazon, Facebook and other giants. In Russia, many businessmen admit that the problem exists, but consider it insolvable.
“Our field is too rapid, business processes change once in three years at maximum. Elderly candidates are unable to adapt so fast,” Vyacheslav Zolotukhin, owner of IT-company EvoDesk.ru, says. “As a rule, if we refer to programmers, they have been stuck in the conditions of 15 years ago. Certainly, there are unique people who absorb everything new, but this is a rare case, and this does not add up motivation to recruit them. First, because it will be difficult to deal with them.” He himself calls his ideas stereotypes, but still does not recruit candidates of preretirement age.
“Pastry makers have to spend the whole day on their feet and lift heavy mixer bowls, owner of “Kusochek Schastya” chain Svetlana Kaznovskaya says. “At the end of a day spent at the production site, my back is aching and my legs are trembling. An elderly person simply would not bear this. It is also difficult to recruit such a person for the position of manager. He would need to have a good knowledge of computer, Photoshop, have an urge for ongoing and rapid work. I welcome elderly people in our team. And I would prefer an older person to unreliable young people. But they cannot adjust with us.” Kazanovskaya also says that ways out do exist: a pastry maker could become a design expert or learn complex modelling of figures for cakes, and improve skills in this sphere. Otherwise, they could commit themselves to management: these positions are taken by several employees above 50, and they are paid the highest salaries.
HR experts consider these two options more or less universal: the choice of a more specific, skill- (rather than hard work-) related domain as part of one’s profession, or switching to executive positions where experience is a priority. However, networking is what is most often needed to build a career in preretirement age: resume of an unfamiliar person above 50 years old can be eliminated even before an interview. This is the basic advice provided by headhunters for those nearing retirement age: develop professional relations to avoid job search “off the street”.
Marina Vasilyeva, specially for
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