A sacked CEO, 60, got many employment offers after posting a LinkedIn video doing press ups – to prove he’s not old.
“Job hunting is challenging enough right now, but when you’re 60, how do you convince people [through an online application] that you’re not an “old wrinkly” or past your “best before” date? “Age”= “Experience”, and if salary is not an issue, can represent great value for money for a growing company or one looking at organisational change. Here are my thoughts…” reads the intro to a video that went viral on LinkedIn this week.
Paul Marks lost on more than 50 jobs because of his age and he had a message for prospective employers – that he was not too old to be hired. So, the 60-year-old former CEO did something cool – press-ups in a formal suit. The video has had more than a million views already.
Paul describes himself as a “COO/Retail Operations specialist back in the UK, looking for any opportunity that will get me back into the industry, after 25 years in Dubai”. He also mentions in the video that he lost his job during the Covid-19 lockdown and did not succeed in getting a new one, because of his age.
He filmed the video of him doing the press-ups to urge recruiters to ‘look past’ his age.
“The message was ‘I’m not an old wrinkly’ and ‘I’m not dead yet’, because when it comes to recruiting you might as well be dead. I can’t get in front of a recruiter. The idea of the video wasn’t even to ask for a job, it was just for someone to read my CV. These computers can jump past a 59-year-old, so I thought this would help,” LadBible quoted him.
The video has worked; more than 100 recruiters now want Paul to be a part of their companies.
Pic courtesy: Kennedy News
