An online job search seems cheaper. But what HR is doing is turning away valuable candidates. They're experiencing false negatives. That means the right person applies for the job electronically but the algorithm kicks them out so they lose that individual.

I think stupidity in business is really an interesting thing. What winds up happening is a disconnect between your company's strategic management and then your more applied on-the-street management. I guarantee with you that the board of directors of most companies has no idea what the costs of hiring people really is in the HR department.

Remember, the word "discrimination" isn't always pejorative. When an employer discriminates because an older worker lacks certain kinds of skills that are important in the market today, then it's almost a legitimate form of discrimination because the employer is just trying to figure out who can actually get the job done.

An online job search seems cheaper. But what HR is doing is turning away valuable candidates. They're experiencing false negatives. That means the right person applies for the job electronically but the algorithm kicks them out so they lose that individual.

On a strategic level, employers really are behaving stupidly. Look at how they do recruiting: this automated process under which they will publish a job description chock full of so-called "key words", and then have software algorithms that attempt to match applicants to the resumes against those key words. So where in the key word collection do we capture institutional knowledge? No one advertises for that. Of course they don't.

There are some older workers - probably a lot - who simply don't have the skills or the wherewithal to do a certain kind of job. There, it's up to the worker to go out and bring themselves up to speed and do it in an aggressive way, do it as quickly as possible.

I really think you cannot separate the money from the age. When employers discriminate over age, they're also discriminating over money. Older workers tend to make more money, especially the higher up you go, and companies don't want to spend the money. They want to spend less.