Organisations routinely praise experience, diversity and lifelong contribution. Yet many older applicants with directly relevant backgrounds are rejected without even a conversation. What does that reveal about the way we assess human value?
I have recently applied for several positions for which I believed I possessed substantial and directly relevant experience. I was not offered any of them. That is neither unusual nor, by itself, evidence of unfair treatment. Employers must choose among competing candidates, and no applicant has an automatic right to a job.
What has troubled me is that I was not invited to a single interview.
This has been particularly difficult to understand in relation to sport positions. After a lifetime of working in sport development, management, programmes and policy, I might reasonably have expected that my suitability was at least worth exploring in conversation.
Perhaps stronger candidates applied. Perhaps my applications did not present my experience effectively enough. But when repeated rejection occurs before any personal assessment, age inevitably becomes part of the question.
The quiet exclusion
Age discrimination rarely announces itself.
A rejection letter does not say, “You are too old.” It says that other candidates more closely matched the requirements. The language is polite, standardised and almost impossible to challenge.
Yet the evidence suggests that age affects recruitment decisions. The Australian Human Rights Commission reported in 2026 that almost one in four employers considered people in their fifties to be “old”, while bias affected applicants at both ends of the age spectrum. Earlier Australian research found that more than a quarter of workers aged over 50 had experienced age discrimination. (Australian Human Rights Commission)
International evidence is equally concerning. A meta-analysis of recruitment field experiments found that older applicants were approximately 34 per cent less likely to receive a positive response than otherwise comparable younger applicants. (OECD Employment Outlook 2025)
An employer may never consciously decide to discriminate. A date on a résumé, the length of a career or the era in which a qualification was obtained can activate assumptions long before an interview is considered.
The result is discrimination without declaration.
Every age carries a risk
Employers may have genuine concerns about appointing an older person. They may question physical capacity, technological adaptability, salary expectations, length of service or willingness to accept direction from a younger manager.
These questions are not inherently unreasonable. What is unreasonable is answering them without speaking to the applicant.
More importantly, every perceived disadvantage associated with age has an equivalent elsewhere in the workforce.
An older applicant may remain for fewer years—but a younger employee may leave sooner in pursuit of promotion.
An older applicant may need to update some technical skills—but a younger applicant may lack the practical judgement that develops only through difficult experience.
An older person may have physical limitations—but so may a person of any age.
An older applicant may have established ways of working—but a younger person may require considerable guidance before becoming fully effective.
None of these observations justifies rejecting younger applicants. They demonstrate why judging any individual through assumptions about an age group is intellectually weak recruitment.
Age may influence capacity, but it does not determine it.
An application is not a request for charity
Older applicants are sometimes treated as though employing them would be an act of social responsibility. That misses the point.
Experience has operational value.
A person who has spent decades in a field may recognise problems before they become crises. They may understand why an earlier reform failed, which relationships matter and how formal policy differs from what happens in practice. They may bring professional networks, institutional memory and the confidence to make decisions without unnecessary drama.
The OECD reports that age-diverse workforces can improve organisational productivity. Older workers contribute through their own knowledge and through the effect they have on the performance of colleagues—mentoring, stabilising teams and transferring knowledge that cannot be captured in a procedure manual. (OECD, Promoting an Age-Inclusive Workforce)
This is especially relevant in sport.
Sport organisations repeatedly lose knowledge when experienced administrators, coaches and development officers leave. New personnel then rediscover the same problems, repeat unsuccessful approaches and rebuild relationships that already existed. We speak enthusiastically about athlete pathways while paying far less attention to pathways for retaining and transferring professional knowledge.
An experienced person may not need to occupy a position for another twenty years to make an important contribution. Five productive years—combined with genuine mentoring—may be more valuable than ten years of constant turnover and institutional forgetting.
The contradiction within sport
Sport presents itself as a vehicle for inclusion. It promotes participation, respect, fair opportunity and the principle that people should be assessed by what they can do.
Yet sport employment does not always reflect those values.
An industry that tells athletes to overcome limitations can be remarkably quick to impose limitations on older applicants. Organisations celebrate former champions, veteran coaches and distinguished officials at ceremonies, while quietly treating comparable experience as a liability during recruitment.
There is something hollow about honouring a person’s past contribution while denying that the same person may still have something useful to contribute.
The contradiction extends beyond sport. Governments encourage people to remain economically active for longer. Retirement ages rise, pension access is delayed and public policy promotes extended working lives. At the same time, recruitment systems can begin treating applicants as old at 50.
We cannot reasonably tell people to work longer while reducing their opportunity to be hired.
Why an interview matters
An interview is not a promise of employment. It is an opportunity to test assumptions.
Can this person perform the work? Are they physically capable where that is genuinely required? Have they kept pace with changes in technology and professional practice? Are their salary expectations realistic? Do they understand the organisation’s current environment? Are they willing to learn, adapt and work under its leadership?
These are legitimate questions. They are also answerable questions.
A résumé can list experience, but it cannot fully reveal energy, curiosity, judgement, humility or continuing ambition. Nor can an applicant demonstrate how their knowledge might benefit an organisation if the recruitment process never permits a conversation.
Of course, employers cannot interview everyone. Shortlisting is necessary. But when an applicant clearly meets the essential requirements and possesses extensive experience in the field, age should not become an unspoken reason to avoid finding out more.
The interview is precisely where suitability should be assessed.
A better approach
Age-inclusive recruitment does not mean favouring older candidates. It means evaluating all candidates against the actual requirements of the position.
Employers could improve this by:
- removing unnecessary age indicators from initial screening;
- distinguishing essential capabilities from assumptions about “cultural fit”;
- using consistent, evidence-based shortlisting criteria;
- assessing technological and physical capability directly where relevant;
- recognising mentoring and knowledge transfer as organisational assets;
- considering flexible, fixed-term or project-based appointments;
- creating teams that deliberately combine emerging talent with accumulated experience.
Older applicants must also remain open to change. Experience should never become a claim to automatic authority. A long career is valuable only if the person can translate what they have learned into the present environment, listen to new ideas and continue developing.
The responsibility runs both ways.
What are we discarding?
I cannot know whether age explains my recent rejections. Nor do I claim that I should have been appointed simply because I have worked in sport for many years.
My concern is more fundamental.
If a person has relevant knowledge, demonstrated experience and an apparent capacity to contribute, is that person not at least worth talking to?
A recruitment system that excludes experience without examining it does more than disappoint an applicant. It deprives the organisation of the opportunity to discover what that applicant knows.
The real loss may not be the job an older person did not receive. It may be the knowledge the organisation never thought to ask about.
