Age discrimination in the workplace

Hi there, my name is Natalie Fisher, and in this video I'm going to talk about age discrimination in the workplace and 3 things you can do to overcome it and just forget about it altogether. I know I'm 33 years old, who am I to be talking about this? But I've had many people ask me, so I wanted to create a helpful video. What we'll cover: how to get your self-esteem back if you've been feeling down in the dumps about age discrimination, how to make people forget how old you are, and soon you will forget too, and 2 inspirational exercises you can do right away to kick age discrimination to the curb. So stay with me. So one, you want to focus on what you can control. So you can't control how old you are. Can you? I wish. So what can you control? Can you learn more about networking? Can you get better at it? Can you improve your interview skills? Can you— how can you be the best candidate? Who cares about— who cares about age? How can you improve yourself in the interview process in general? How can you connect better with those people? I would say that it's especially important to learn how to network for opportunities Because when you know someone, you're even more likely to get hired. This is true regardless of your age. You can also rest assured that you're not the only person being discriminated against, and I don't mean age-wise. I mean discrimination of all types happens every single day. There's weight discrimination, racial discrimination, sometimes people don't get hired because they have an accent. We're all in this together, and while we can be aware of this being a thing, dwelling on it only makes us less confident, less interesting, and more likely to have negative thoughts going through our head during the interviews, and those will project out to the people in the room. So focus on what you can control and forget about what you can't. Just a little tidbit here: time spent dwelling on what we can't control could be time spent creating magnificent things that we can control. We all have self-doubt, no matter what our age. We have— we all have it. Even people like Bill Gates have self-doubt. The key is to use it as a tool to focus on what really matters and how we can improve. We want to make it a healthy thing without it becoming unhealthy. So how to make people forget how old you are? When you can have an engaging conversation about the things that you bring to the table in the workplace. When you can tell powerful stories about the things you've done, you can make people fall in love with you. No joke. When you're talking to them about the exact issues that they're dealing with right now, the exact thing that was stressing them out last night, or you're collaborating right there in the interview with them on how you would increase their leads or how you would do this or that differently to solve a specific specific problem that they're having, they can't afford to care how old you are because the most important thing to them is getting their problem solved. That's why they have a job opening in the first place, am I right? All right, moving on to 2 inspirational exercises that you can do right now. So the first is make a list of all the things you've done in your career that were noteworthy. Make a list of what is going well for you. Make a list of your positives. This is where you'll start to craft your career stories. 2, check out older professionals on LinkedIn in the jobs you'd like to be in. So not all of them will be on LinkedIn, but start reaching out to people and start having conversations. Conversations about issues companies are having that you can solve. Conversations about the industry and how it's changing and what you can do to stay Stand out as a candidate. Conversations that have nothing to do with age. Be enthusiastic, be passionate, and people will forget how old you are, and they'll see that it doesn't matter if you can help them. Who cares how old you are? And there you have it, 3 tips to overcome age discrimination in the workplace. Now, I know these are not a cure for it. It still happens. I wrote an extensive blog post on it with a lot more information. I will put the link to that below. Thank you for listening to me on this. Like I said, I know I'm not in a position to talk about age discrimination since I'm 33, but I can tell you I have been discriminated against before for gender, for weight, so I know what it feels like. So if you'd like to get more information from me, if you'd like this video, you can click the link below and you can grab the guide for situational interviewing that I created. So you can start working on your career stories. What you're gonna get is an in-depth look at the powerful formula I talk about for answering the questions, a series of concrete examples for the most commonly asked situational interview questions, and fill-in-the-blank templates for each question. So all you have to do is fill in the blanks and you will be off to the races. If you're still getting stuck because preparing your Stories can be tough. I know you probably have lots of them, but they're just hard to get out on paper. I've also included 25 questions to come up with your own stories much faster and more effectively. You'll get all this in a beautifully designed workbook that's especially prepared to help you prep for your next interview. Thank you so much for watching. I hope to see you on the other side. Don't forget to subscribe, like, thumbs up if you like this video. Thumbs down if you hated this video, and I will see you next week. Maybe.