The best person for the role

I placed a woman not long ago who was, by any honest measure, the best person for the role. She had the experience, the judgement, and the kind of quiet, earned confidence that comes from having done the work for a long time. She also had a speech disability and was older than the typical candidate profile.

Nine times out of ten, those two things will be held against someone. Not overtly — no one says it plainly — but the feedback comes back polished: not the right culture fit. That phrase does a lot of heavy lifting in this industry. It can mean almost anything, and it often means something that, if you said it directly, you would not be comfortable defending.

I went back to the client and told them plainly: she was the best person for the role, and she would stay in it the longest. She got the job. Two years later, she's still there.

That outcome shouldn't feel like a victory. But it does — and that's the problem.

According to the most recent joint research from AHRI and the Australian Human Rights Commission, nearly a quarter of HR professionals now classify workers aged 51 to 55 as "older" — up from 10 per cent in 2023. Despite more than half of employers reporting hard-to-fill vacancies, only 56 per cent said they were open to hiring workers aged 50 to 64 "to a large extent." That's barely a majority, in a tight labour market, for a cohort at the height of their professional capability.

Sixty-four per cent of older Australians say they've been affected by ageism in the last five years — and that figure doesn't capture what's invisible: the applications that don't progress, the interviews that don't happen, the quiet decisions made before anyone picks up the phone.

Women carry a compounded version of this. Ageism tends to be gendered, and women over 55 are particularly affected. I'll say it directly: women over 55 are invisible in the candidate market. Not because their skills have declined, but because the assumptions about them have calcified. Even women who reach senior executive or CEO level at 55 and over take home around $93,000 per year less on average than their male counterparts at the same level. That is not a pipeline problem. That is a perception problem.

The diversity and inclusion conversation has made genuine progress in some areas, but age — especially combined with gender or disability — still sits in a blind spot. A global survey of 6,000 employers across 36 countries found that more than half didn't include age in their diversity and inclusion policies at all. We talk about needing a diverse workforce, and then design our hiring practices around a narrow idea of what a suitable candidate looks like. We shouldn't need diversity quotas — but outside of those quotas, it often isn't done well. The intention exists in policy. It doesn't always exist in practice.

Here's the thing: the reluctance to hire older workers doesn't hold up against the evidence. Research consistently shows that employers report no meaningful difference between older and younger workers in terms of job performance, concentration, adaptability, energy levels, or creativity. The hesitation isn't based on experience. It's cultural, and culture can change.

Australians are also working longer, whether they choose to or not. With the pension age now at 67, and cost-of-living pressures pushing people further into their working lives, a more age-diverse workforce isn't an aspiration — it's already the reality. Hiring managers and their organisations need to catch up.

My candidate's story ended well. She's still in the role, doing exactly what I said she would. But the fact that it took a direct conversation, a deliberate push, and a consultant willing to go back and advocate — that shouldn't be exceptional. It should be standard practice.

The more we open ourselves up to candidates who don't fit the standard mould — older workers, people with disabilities, neurodiverse candidates — the better our placements become. Not as an act of charity, but because the best person for the role is not always the most obvious one.

She was. She proved it. And she deserved a fair shot from the start.