Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. A 21-year-old, 35-year-old, 50-year-old, and a 60-year-old apply for 2,000 jobs each, splitting these across five different sectors. Now here’s the punchline — across all age groups, more than 70% of their applications didn’t even get a response.
The study, by cloud communications experts at Ringover, makes for a pretty depressing reading. Not least if you’re currently navigating the jobs market. It’s a cruel world, and things tend to get worse the further down the career ladder you are. So a 21-year-old fresh out of lectures and finals received a reply from just 2.4 in every 10 applications they put out.
Considering how intensive applications can be, that’s an awful lot of time putting work in for scant responses, let alone reward. The statistics sound bleak, although it’s important to remember this is just one study based on a simulation, with the company creating CVs for four age groups, all equally qualified but with different levels of experience. These were then tweaked to match five of the most common UK jobs: Finance Manager, Primary School Teacher, Retail Assistant, Nurse, and HGV/Road Transport Driver.
The average positive response rate — essentially, when you progress to the next stage of the recruitment process — was just 14.6% across all imaginary candidates. Sadly, for the 21-year-old this falls to a mere 12.8%, with 60-year-olds fairing only a little better (14.4%) and 35-year-olds the second most successful (14.8%). In terms of the career types, Retail Assistant was the only job where 21-year-olds were favoured, and this also has the lowest average annual salary at £26,141 per year, equating to £10.24 per hour. And even then, the youngest person in the test had less than 6% positive responses.
21-year-olds are also in with more of a chance when looking at teaching. Although the favourite age for positive responses was 50, those fresh out of training were more likely to get a call back than those aged 35 and 60, and had about as much chance as people who’ve just turned 40. This is presumably because at 21 people are choosing to start their careers as teachers, most 35-year-olds who aren’t already teaching are still in a different industry, and many people make the switch to education later in life.
Of course, there are swings and roundabouts at play here. As we get older, there’s a perceived risk of being written off, particularly when it comes to career paths and advancement. A separate study found women over 60 thought they were being left out in the cold for promotions and other opportunities to progress, while Ringover’s research shows your chances of securing new jobs at this age fall by 10% compared with 50-year-olds. Most importantly though, this new examination of the British jobs market tells us there’s actually very little difference in terms of how successful, or how many replies, we can expect at different ages. Between the four candidates, there’s just 3.4% difference in how many positive responses they received. So stay positive, keep your options open and know that it’s (almost definitely) not a problem with you.
