I feel sorry for human resource people nowadays. HR is marginalized. No one really pays much attention to what's going on in HR and HR struggles with the fact that what is prevalent in America today is job boards, huge databases that we use to recruit and hire people.

The most successful people are those who are wildly enthusiastic about their work.

Companies are missing out on phenomenal skills and capabilities of experienced older job hunters: wealth of knowledge, expertise, seasoning, maturity. Companies need to be reminded of that.

Only a human being would be able to assess whether candidates are capable, personality-wise, of sharing and disseminating that institutional knowledge to help other newer and younger workers.

There is age discrimination, but I think there are two kinds. One is when the employer is discriminating for specific reasons and doing it intentionally. The other is where you have managers who really aren't looking to discriminate but feel a little on edge because the candidate they're talking to is older. Sometimes they can even smell age concern on the part of the candidate and they wind up discriminating almost unconsciously.

I think that the big age problem in the job market today is really on the part of employers and that they don't seem to be calculating the cost of age discrimination to them when they practice it.

I really don't think that an older worker can stop age discrimination, but you can successfully distract the employer from that issue if you focus on the reason they really want to hire you and that can make you more successful. It's up to you to demonstrate that.