As Australia ages, its workforce should be getting wiser. Instead, we’re watching experienced professionals quietly disappear from the industries built on communication, culture, and connection. Marketing. Media. Advertising. These are fields that prize intuition, empathy, and audience understanding – yet they are becoming less welcoming to the very people who have honed those skills over decades.
This isn’t just about economics or perception. It’s about systems. Systems that are increasingly driven by algorithms.
In today’s hiring landscape, Artificial Intelligence is playing a growing role in screening candidates. Done right, this technology has the potential to reduce bias. Done wrong – or used without oversight – it reinforces the very prejudices it was meant to fix.
From Redundancy to Erasure
Let’s start with the pattern. Redundancies are hitting older workers disproportionately, especially in creative and communications industries. Once they exit, re-entering the workforce becomes a far tougher battle.
Why? Because AI, powered by historical hiring data, often rewards youth-coded résumé traits — short stints, trendy terminology, linear career paths while penalising those with gaps, long tenure, or older formatting styles.
And the consequences are real. In the U.S., a group of plaintiffs over the age of 40 recently filed a lawsuit against HR tech provider Workday, alleging that its algorithm consistently screened them out without any human interaction. Hundreds of applications, rejected within minutes. No interviews. No explanations.
The Data Says It All
Closer to home, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Older and Younger Workers Report (2024) lays bare the scale of the issue. One in four employers now sees candidates in their early 50s as “old.” That perception has doubled since 2022.
The same report found that older workers are significantly more likely to be excluded from hiring processes, not because of capability or qualifications, but due to unconscious (and increasingly automated) bias. Some employers believe older workers won’t adapt. Others assume they’ll cost too much. These assumptions become coded into software training algorithms to make decisions based on flawed logic and fear.
AI doesn’t create these biases. It learns them, then scales them.
The Business Case for Older Talent
Ironically, while older candidates are being screened out of job pools, they make up the most lucrative customer segment in Australia. Australians over 50 hold the majority of the country’s disposable income. They are loyal, experienced, and deeply engaged — precisely the traits that marketing and communications professionals are trained to leverage.
If you care about real audience insights, you need people who understand the audience. And that includes the 50+ demographic.
So why are industries that pride themselves on connection and culture excluding professionals who’ve lived through and shaped – those very cultural shifts?
Automating Indifference
The danger isn’t just in lost productivity. It’s in the loss of institutional knowledge, mentorship, and wisdom. More troubling still is the erosion of opportunity, dignity, and self-worth among those being excluded.
When decisions about someone’s career prospects are made in milliseconds – by code trained on past prejudice — it’s not just inefficient. It’s unethical.
And the silence around this issue? Deafening. Many older professionals don’t speak up, fearing further marginalisation or being labelled “out of touch.”
But the silence must break. Because the future of recruitment depends on fixing this.
What Needs to Happen Now
There are glimmers of hope. The Experience Advocacy Taskforce is leading the charge against ageism in the creative industries, highlighting underrepresentation, lobbying for systemic change, and offering tangible tools to foster age-inclusive workplaces.
But real transformation will require more than advocacy.
We need:
- Transparency in AI hiring tools: Companies must audit and explain how their algorithms make decisions — and correct course when those decisions perpetuate exclusion.
- Legislative safeguards: Regulations must keep pace with AI, ensuring age discrimination isn’t coded into the hiring process.
- Cultural shifts in hiring: Experience must be reframed as a strategic advantage, not a liability.
- Mentorship models: Older professionals should not only be retained but empowered to train, mentor, and collaborate across generations.
Because what the industry claims to value, empathy, audience insight, cultural fluency – isn’t taught in a bootcamp. It’s earned over time.
Time to Reclaim the Narrative
At Hire Note, we hear the stories too often: brilliant minds edged out by blind systems. People who once built brands now unable to get a callback. The leaders of yesterday, written off before their potential can shape tomorrow.
This is a call to the entire recruitment ecosystem: Don’t let automation become the excuse for exclusion. Use tech to elevate talent — not eliminate it.
Because the workforce is ageing. The audience is ageing. And the best ideas don’t come from algorithms — they come from experience.
