Exactly as the title suggests, do you think it’s true or have you seen or experienced ageism in the digital marketing world? Is it a young persons industry?
I ask because a good friend wishes to enter the digital marketing arena and after some research online has come to the conclusion that although there is a skills shortage reported, companies are only interested in hiring folks under 35 for jobs like seo consultant, social media consultant etc
Any thoughts appreciated.
In all jobs there’s certain ageism and maybe it is more obvious in Digital Marketing because is a new area of marketing even if the principles are the same than offline marketing. It is just the media that has changed.
Still, if your friend has strong knowledge of marketing and enthusiam to get into digital marketing… go for it!
Now, I want to make something clear. I know that everyone knows, and it looks like you, @zimbizee, got one this right. But just want to make sure that we speak the same language:
SEO IS NOT MARKETING!!! IT IS NOT DIGITAL MARKETING, IT IS NOT ONLINE MARKETING… MARKETING AND SEO ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
Are they related? Sure. They’re so related that you could say that SEO is part of marketing. But SEO is really related more to code and content than anything.
Why have I said all this? because when I see a job offer as a SEO consultant, I can’t help to wonder… “does this company know what they’re really want?”
Becoming obsessed with SEO is silly. SEO is just a bunch of good coding practices that a good coder should be implement anyway, and why to place a particular word in the title because it is a keyword is a matter of common sense… If your article speak about aeroplanes, it should be in the title anyway. And how frequently or repeated you should find it in the text, it is just a question of knowing to write properly! Not because if you abuse of the word, Google will peanlize you… but because if you repeat it too much, the reader will know that you can’t write and he’ll be bored and leave.
Most of those companies, when they say SEO consultant, really want a marketer that can code and write… and even program, if possible, or more…
Social media is a different beast and you can escape from the coding stuff most of the time.
So your friend should be careful with the ads and try to guess what’s behind. Not all companies know what they need, even less what they want 
But I guess this can be an advantage too 
I have heard of freelancers who work purely online and don’t use their real age and info because of this reason!! Crazy…
I’ve experienced it in interviews. One interviewer about 30 years old said, “You’re quite a bit older than the rest of our people. Do you think you can work with and take instructions from younger supervisors?” Then they offered me a job at $12 an hour. I took that as their way of getting around the fact that she’d just blatantly demonstrated age discrimination, but knew I’d refuse the offer.
I think this is the new “you’re over-qualified” response. You could probably still report her, but it depends upon how far you want to go with something like this. It could be more trouble than it’s worth (sadly).
I think you’re absolutely right. This happened back in 2009 when the economy was really bad. I didn’t report her to anyone other than the HR department – I told them she may need some additional interview training. I didn’t think I’d get anything out a law suit or anything like that. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been worth my time and expense.
I think that it was the way to tell you “we’re not going to pay well so if you still want it, fine”