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Can marketing managers expend so much energy and enthusiasm
early in their career that they are no longer worth employing once they’ve passed
forty? Some companies think so, according to Jonny Cainer, founding director
of marketing recruitment specialists, Marketing Professionals UK.
If the apocryphal ‘foreign currency dealer’ myth is to be
believed, banks and finance houses recruit brilliant young mathematicians straight
from Oxbridge and pay them vast sums to spend a few years on the trading floor
on the assumption that they will have completely exhausted their intellectual
resources in three or four years.
Then, if the story is to be believed, in their mid-to-late
thirties, they will be cast aside, loaded but broken, free to drift into poetry
and bucolic eccentricity.
True?
In isolated cases, where mental ill health has been a factor,
perhaps, but in general management practice? I very much doubt it.
Peaks
We all know and accept that sportspeople will reach a peak
of performance, usually between their late-twenties and early thirties, after
which the physical constraints of their maturing bodies will bring the excellence
of their sporting endeavours to a natural end.
But can the same be said of those whose achievements rely
on cerebral talent, intellect and the ability to learn and acquire experience?
Certainly not in the realms of the law, entertainment, politics and wealth acquisition,
where the names Michael Howard, Bruce Forsyth and Philip Green (to name but three)
spring to mind.
So where do managers in general (and ‘live-wire’ marketing
managers in particular) stand in this equation? Is there a general
rule specifying that those who have expended huge amounts of effort, energy and
enthusiasm in the early years of their business lives reach an age threshold beyond
which their corporate usefulness begins to decline rather than increase?
As a recruiter, I certainly come across this kind of implicit
ageism in the job ‘specs’ given to me by prospective employers. Their ideal
marketing management candidate is often described as being ‘in the late twenties
or early thirties’.
Past it?
I’ve certainly come across cases where an outstandingly qualified
candidate has had to accept a £15,000-or-so drop in annual salary in order to
overcome the barrier of being over forty - and therefore seen as having reached
the age at which they were likely to start ‘running out of steam’ in the foreseeable
future.
My position on the age ‘rule’ is that it is irrelevant.
There are people who are indolent, unimaginative and utterly lacking in
ambition at twenty, while others are full of creativity, drive and enterprise
at seventy-five.
What’s likely to matter in an established marketing department,
however, is whether or not a new recruit will fit in with the youthful, post-graduate,
creative ‘culture’ or upset the existing age/grade applecart.
Older recruits may be seen as lacking affinity with a ‘youth’
product or unable to bridge the generation gap with brand managers and their marketplace.
Recruits with age seniority (and perhaps more experience) usually resent reporting
to very bright, but younger, managers.
The essence of a marketing manager’s worth is in the innate
abilities he or she possesses, the skills they have acquired and developed over
the years and, most importantly, the body of experience they have gained.
Being a thrusting, dynamic visionary or perceptive individual
is due to innate characteristics, not age. Similarly, being able to motivate
a sales force or knowing the carbonated drinks market inside out has nothing to
do with age, it’s to do with skill and knowledge.
Unlawful
The law makes it quite clear that it is unlawful to discriminate
against someone on the basis of his or her age. That said, someone’s suitability
for a management role in marketing is largely a subjective matter and the law
is virtually unenforceable in this arena.
In reality, we all make politically incorrect assumptions
based on a mixture of intuition, instinct, received wisdom and our lifetime’s
accrual of knowledge and information. It’s impossible not to.
Whether we like it or not, ‘young’ is synonymous with the
business virtues of vigour, endeavour, appetite and expectation. ‘Older’
has connotations with the less businesslike qualities of inflexibility, apathy
and complacency. Try as we might, recruiters can never quite prevent these
truisms from influencing essentially subjective decisions.
The best we can hope to do is to remind ourselves - and our
clients - of the ‘plateau’ theory. People reach the plateau where they stop
learning, performing and showing an appetite for work, at all sorts of different
ages, for all sorts of different reasons. For some, it can happen at fourteen
years of age. Others are still creating, thinking and working tirelessly
into late age.
The trick is not to comply with stereotypical formula when
seeking out the best-qualified person for a marketing role but to look for deeper
qualities.
The business world is littered with talents that came into
full bloom when they were in their teens and twenties - way before anyone had
any reasonable expectation that they would do so and, conversely, people who only
achieved success decades after their first step into the business arena.
Age isn’t the simple determinant it’s cracked up to be in
common business folklore.
In the marketing management arena, innate ability, acquired
knowledge and breadth of experience are.
For further information, please contact:
Jonny Cainer
Marketing Professionals UK 0161 236
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Rick Blears
rick@rmspr.co.uk
0161 929 5194
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