Not a great feeling to understate the case.
Given the make-up of ExecuNet membership (average age 52) we gets lots of feedback and war stories from people facing this issue and they often ask me what my feelings are about the subject. Maybe it's my own age (72) kicking in or just that in combination with the life experiences that have gone along with it, but what I usually tell them is that in my experience, when it comes to discrimination (be it age, sex, religion, or whatever) there seems to be a spectrum - on one end are people whose minds you will never change and on the on the other are those whose minds you don't have to worry about changing. The rest of us tend to fall somewhere in-between which means to one degree or another, while we all have a bias, we are influence able, and that is the group on which I would concentrate.
Said differently, it depends on how you want to spend your time and energy. The fact is that we all need to go to work somewhere and if you elect to go the suit route, aside from the time and expense, the "real world" probability is that no employer is going to be that excited about bringing you on board for fear that they would be next on your list, and in this day and age, finding out that you are involved in a legal battle would not take long.
Not an easy choice for sure, and it doesn't help with the deep anger that one feels, but maybe what reality dictates as the best choice for you and your family. Would that it were a perfect world.
All of this doesn't mean that there is nothing to be done except to sit back and "take it." There is a great deal that one can do, especially if you are focused on those in the middle of the spectrum who can be influenced, and while there are a number of tools one can use to help someone "to see the light" I think the most powerful of those available are information and networking.
What I mean is this: if you have done your homework on an organization in which you have a real interest, you will be armed with the knowledge of the challenges they face, and therefore are able to share with them the fact that over the course of your career to date that you have dealt with the issues they face, and at 45+, probably more than once.
When people are engaged in conversations that are (a) focused on their needs and (b) are seeing potential solutions to their problems, they are not thinking about your age, they are thinking about how much easier their life can be. That is the power of information.
That said, what I hear a lot of from members is that all of this is well and good except they never get the chance to share the information because they never hear back from their responses to job postings, so what good is all this info.
My response usually runs along the lines of if postings is what you are chasing, I am not surprised to hear it.
Whoever and however your electronic outreach is being screened, it is highly unlikely that they will be the least bit interested or be feeling inclined to find out how much value you can bring. Their role is to screen candidates out just as fast as they can and that usually translates to whatever you have sent is going to see the light of day for something in the neighborhood of twenty (20) seconds - give or take.
In order for you to get the chance to show what you bring based on your research and experience, you need to be face-to-face and that will come about as the result of your networking into the organization, not from answering postings.
New information? Hardly. Does it require the investment of your time, energy and passion? Yup, and the operative word is "passion." Once you start to care about something, you will find the time and the energy.
Investing your precious time sending responses into the black hole of cyberspace drains both energy and passion. Gaining information on organizations that produce products or services that get you juiced will produce more energy and passion than you have felt in a long, long time.
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