When did 50 become a recruitment category?

I read an article in City AM this week about easyJet's drive to recruit more cabin crew over the age of 50.

Since launching the initiative in 2022, they've increased that number by 127%. Around 12% of cabin crew are now over 50, and the number over 60 has almost quadrupled.

It's the over-60s bit that got me thinking. Not because I find it remarkable. Quite the opposite.

Seeing people in their 60s being recruited removes a question that starts creeping in once you pass a certain age: Will they think I'm too old?

If you’ve read my website you’ll know that I talk about my 25+ years of experience. So you’ll have worked out that I'm over 50. But, in my head, I'm somewhere in my 30s. We experience ourselves as the same person we've always been — we know what we're capable of, how hard we work and what we've learnt. Then you look at the number attached to your age and wonder whether someone else might see you differently.

The barrier exists before anyone has even applied

If you're in your 50s and don't get an interview, you'll probably never know why. More relevant experience. Wrong CV. Internal candidate. Or perhaps someone saw 25 years' experience and mentally translated it into old.

What interests me about easyJet's approach is that it hasn't simply added an equal opportunities statement to its job adverts. It's gone out of its way to show older people it genuinely means them. In its own research, 28% of over-50s considering cabin crew assumed it was a job for younger people, and 46% worried they'd be the oldest in their training cohort.

The barrier existed before anyone had even applied.

Recruitment advertising has always done this

I've spent most of my career in recruitment advertising. We're taught to understand our audience — the language, tone, imagery and benefits that appeal to the people we're trying to reach.

But age has always been lurking within those audience profiles. Look at enough recruitment advertising and you'll see it. The young team around a laptop. The table football. The entire workforce apparently aged between 24 and 34. None of it says over-50s need not apply. It doesn't have to. The person looking at it can make that decision for themselves.

In my experience, marketing agencies are an interesting example. Scroll their social feeds and you'll often see young, vibrant teams, while people visibly working well into their 60s seem far less prominent. For an industry built on understanding audiences, it's quite a blind spot.

Employer branding can help — but only up to a point

The obvious answer is employer branding. Don't just say you're inclusive — show it. Feature the 63-year-old on your careers page. Let people hear from someone who changed career at 55. Real stories cost very little and are far more powerful than another equal opportunities statement.

And this isn't something reserved for businesses with huge employer-brand budgets. A small company choosing whose stories it tells, whose photographs it uses and how it talks about its people is employer branding too.

But employer branding only solves one side of the problem. It might make a 55-year-old think yes, people like me work there. It doesn't stop the person doing the hiring from making a completely different set of assumptions.

How long will they stay? Are they thinking about retirement? Will they expect a higher salary?

Nobody has to say any of those things out loud for them to affect a hiring decision. These aren't just hypothetical concerns either: Acas specifically warns employers about unconscious bias, ageist stereotypes and allowing assumptions about age to influence recruitment decisions.

Attracting older candidates is only half the job. You also have to make sure they get a genuinely fair chance once they arrive.

So when did 50 become a category?

There are specialist recruitment websites for the over-50s. Age-friendly employer schemes. Returner programmes. Many do genuinely valuable work — and they exist because there's a real problem to solve.

But isn't it slightly strange that we've reached the point where we need them?

We don't generally see campaigns reassuring 37-year-olds that employers still value their experience. A 42-year-old isn't generally described as an "older worker". Then somewhere around 50, something shifts.

We've made 50-plus a category because, somewhere along the line, mainstream recruitment stopped making enough of those people feel included.

Age tells you remarkably little

In the last agency I worked in, one of my colleagues was well into his 70s. If you spoke to him without knowing his age, you'd have no idea. He was sharp, hugely experienced and could run rings around plenty of people decades younger.

Someone of 35 can be completely stuck in their ways. Someone of 70 can be curious, adaptable and brilliant with new technology.

We're very good at valuing "years of experience" — right up until somebody has enough years for us to start worrying about their age. That makes very little sense.

There's an economic argument here too. By 2030, half of Western Europe's workforce will be over 50. The Centre for Ageing Better estimates that closing the employment gap for over-50s could add at least £9 billion a year to UK GDP. Businesses are complaining about skills shortages while overlooking a huge pool of experienced people. That doesn't make commercial sense.

Perhaps "everyone is welcome" isn't always enough

For years, we've tried to make recruitment communications inclusive by making them neutral. Everyone is welcome. Equal opportunities employer. All good things to say — but if a particular group has spent years thinking people like me don't work there, neutrality probably isn't enough.

Sometimes you have to show them.

easyJet has Francesca Hicks, who joined in her 60s after working as a secretary and a nurse. Eighteen months in, she'd already flown more than 250 times. Pam Clark started at 53 and was still flying at 73.

Those stories do more to shift assumptions than a diversity statement ever could. If you're 52 or 62, you can see there's a place for you. You stop asking "Would they employ someone my age?" and start asking "Would I fancy doing that?"

That's a significant shift.

And that brings me back to easyJet

What easyJet is doing is excellent. It's visible, specific and uses real people rather than vague statements of intent. It gives someone in their 50s or 60s permission to consider a role they might previously have dismissed.

But it's only part of the story.

Inclusive recruitment isn't just about who you encourage to apply — it's about what happens after they do. Whether the person reading the CV sees experience or age. Whether the interviewer sees capability or starts calculating how many working years they think someone has left.

easyJet has challenged the candidate's assumption that cabin crew is a young person's job. The bigger challenge for employers is making sure they challenge their own assumptions too.

Telling someone they're welcome is a good start. Making sure they genuinely are is the bit that matters.