dividual the same age as your son, your esteem erodes and your confidence self-destructs. Impotent, humiliated, and angry, you accept that nothing you can say is going to change anything. You continue job hunting with a mounting sense of frustration and an iFor decades, women have chaffed at the invisible glass ceiling which prevents their moving into the high executive brackets that their competence, knowledge and skills have earned. The same amorphous barrier confronts older workers both in terms of advancement within a company and, most especially, when a job change is required. There is an adage in the military that if a rank above major has not been obtained within twenty years, it never will be. The ranks of early military retirees are sprinkled with majors who knew that ten or fifteen more years would never bring a Colonel's cluster.

How can such "unwritten rules" be fought? No lawsuit can prove that you were the best individual for the job. No employer is unintelligent enough to state that your age is the stumbling block. You sense the discrimination, you become aware of the sideways glances and the emotional response of an interviewer, but you feel powerless to change their perspective and their bias.

Sitting across an interviewing desk, often facing an individual the same age as your son, your esteem erodes and your confidence self-destructs. Impotent, humiliated, and angry, you accept that nothing you can say is going to change anything. You continue job hunting with a mounting sense of frustration and an in

t within a company and, most especially, when a job change is required. There is an adage in the military that if a rank above major has not been obtained within twenty years, it never will be. The ranks of early military retirees are sprinkled with majors who knew that ten or fifteen more years would never bring a Colonel's cluster.

How can such "unwritten rules" be fought? No lawsuit can prove that you were the best individual for the job. No employer is unintelligent enough to state that your age is the stumbling block. You sense the discrimination, you become aware of the sideways glances and the emotional response of an interviewer, but you feel powerless to change their perspective and their bias.

Sitting across an interviewing desk, often facing an individual the same age as your son, your esteem erodes and your confidence self-destructs. Impotent, humiliated, and angry, you accept that nothing you can say is going to change anything. You continue job hunting with a mounting sense of frustration and an i

knew that ten or fifteen more years would never bring a Colonel's cluster.

How can such "unwritten rules" be fought? No lawsuit can prove that you were the best individual for the job. No employer is unintelligent enough to state that your age is the stumbling block. You sense the discrimination, you become aware of the sideways glances and the emotional response of an interviewer, but you feel powerless to change their perspective and their bias.

Sitting across an interviewing desk, often facing an individual the same age as your son, your esteem erodes and your confidence self-destructs. Impotent, humiliated, and angry, you accept that nothing you can say is going to change anything. You continue job hunting with a mounting sense of frustration and an i

umbling block. You sense the discrimination, you become aware of the sideways glances and the emotional response of an interviewer, but you feel powerless to change their perspective and their bias.

Sitting across an interviewing desk, often facing an individual the same age as your son, your esteem erodes and your confidence self-destructs. Impotent, humiliated, and angry, you accept that nothing you can say is going to change anything. You continue job hunting with a mounting sense of frustration and an i

dividual the same age as your son, your esteem erodes and your confidence self-destructs. Impotent, humiliated, and angry, you accept that nothing you can say is going to change anything. You continue job hunting with a mounting sense of frustration and an indisputable anticipation of failure.

If you have nothing to lose, why not attack the problem head-on? Prejudice and discrimination survive only in the silence of unexamined judgments and, often unconscious, illogic. Confront the situation and at least you create the opportunity for the white light of reason to enter the fray.

Try these approaches to prompt more honest interaction and possibly more rational conclusions.

1. You need to be the one to put the age issue on the table. Offer it gently, as one area of needed exploration regarding why you fit the employer's needs. Bring it up objectively, as something that can be discussed unemotionally, without triggering lethal interviewer defensiveness.

2. Acknowledge your age as a basis for emphasizing the experience of a lifetime and the value that such experience can provide to any employer. Concentrate on describing how business has changed over the course of years and how deftly you have adapted to those changes and incorporated new ideas and technical