I was told a story at the weekend which might be urban legend but is just as likely to be true: twenty-something girl working in technology industry goes into garage to buy car. Chooses the model, talks financing. She's earning around £85,000 a year (or 85K as it's always written now) so money's not a problem. She tells the salesman that she might be about to change jobs though.
She comes in a couple of days later, says everything's OK and to go ahead with the order. The salesman asks if she got the new job. She says no, but they'd offered her 120K, so she went back and told her current employers who immediately improved on it. She's staying with them now and she's happy. So is the dealer, because she ordered the car, and so is the next person who gets offered the job in the other technology company at 120k.
Apparently this happens all the time in the technology sector. It used to happen in financial services, although the reality is that it was a small few who job-hopped, passed go and collected an extra bonus every time. And an even smaller few who stayed in their current jobs because they were too valuable to lose. But it seems now that, if you're in the right industry, you can name your job and your price, and when they ask you why you're demanding a six-figure salary when you're not long out of transition year, you can flick back your shining hair and say smartly: "Because I'm worth it."
I wish I could have done that when I was twenty-something but we were brought up to be pathetically glad to have a job at all. The late 1970s and early 1980s weren't a good time to be job-hunting in Ireland, and an employee was often seen as a drain on a company's resources rather than an asset to be nurtured.
I'm so glad that it's different now. It's amazing to think that you can name your price these days and wonderful for all of the twenty-somethings who don't have to live in dreary bedsits with mould on the walls but can, instead, rent out designer pads in Temple Bar for breathtaking amounts of money.
BUT what if you're not twenty-something? Can you still name your price? Shouldn't it go up with experience? Or does it go down with age? Funny thing, age. Like many people before me, I've realised that you don't actually feel all that different the older you get. But research in the UK has shown that job applicants there are now much more likely to face rejection at age 42, regardless of their experience. And it appears that in the hightech industry you're on the scrapheap even sooner. Apparently 35 is the cut-off point there. In 1979, people over 50 comprised 93 per cent of the working population whereas now they comprise only 68 per cent.
It could be that the Internet twenty somethings are now like footballers, with such short working lives that they have to earn as much as they can before they burn out. At 29
you're about to be replaced by someone even more computer literate and more determined. That used to be said about financial dealers and it's true that it's still a relatively young profession. But many dealers have turned into useful members of society by moving into other areas within the same sector. And lots of us move on because, after a certain time there's a been there, done that factor about it all, even when it involves shifting millions of pounds around the globe.
But it's chilling for me to realise that, having retired from the day job a mere two months ago, I am (as of yesterday) now too old to be considered for further employment by lots of employers. When I informed my friends that I was chucking in the bond-dealing towel to write full time they told me that I didn't have to worry, that I could always get another job if things didn't turn out as I hoped.
But, going on the newspaper reports, pigs would be donning their wings before I'd even get called for an interview. Mind you, since the first thing I did on my retirement was to throw out my 15 pairs of boring work shoes and stuff my suits into the back of the wardrobe, I wouldn't have anything to wear to an interview. Or is that forty-something thinking? If I was going to an interview now should I be wearing a cropped top, baseball cap, hip-hugging jeans and a ring in my navel?
The reason that's most often given for rejecting somebody on age grounds is that the employer needs someone who can adapt. For heaven's sake, if you've managed to get to 42 and you're going to a job interview, you've damned well learned to adapt. You were there when they first wheeled in the huge mainframe computer that had to be kept in a special, dust-free room. You were there when floppy disks really were floppy. You even learned if you were a bit nerdy to program in Basic. Then you learned it all over again when everything changed so radically. And that's not being adaptable?
The Government talks of bringing back our emigrants and of getting older people into the workforce to keep the economy growing. But as long as there's a perception that people over 40 can only do non-technology-friendly, humanresource-type jobs, we're in trouble.
Lots of people have asked me how I've adapted from a very defined working day to a less structured one, thinking I would crumble the minute I left the arms of my employer. Perfectly well, thanks, is the answer. And when new challenges come along, as I'm sure they will, I'm confident that I can adapt to those too. But it really, really bugs me to think that there's someone out there that could reject me for a job - any job - simply because I was born before 1960.
Someone who is 42 and experienced in an industry should be given an immediate interview. And paid a top salary. And the interviewer should look no further. Because somebody of 42 has adapted more than once in their lifetime so far. They can do so again. And that is definitely bound to be worth it.
Sheila O'Flanagan writes a column in Business This Week, published each Friday with The Irish Times. Until recently she was also a bond dealer with NCB stockbrokers. She is the author of four best-selling novels, including Suddenly Single. Her next book, Far From Over, will be published by Headline in May