Recruitment Woes? Tap Into Age Power

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 2000

Speaking of the Reader's Digest audience, Tom Ryder recently said, "While it is somewhat unfashionable to be 50-plus now, it will be wildly fashionable to be 50-plus in five years." Angelo Varrone, consultant and former CEO and president of Shore-Varrone Inc. (now part of Bill Communications), says older people should become more popular in the labor market, too. "It only makes sense," he says. "Whatever you are talking about--finance or the Internet or something else in publishing--the subject always comes back to getting and keeping people. As everyone knows, we are dealing with a tight labor market and probably the longest and strongest growth cycle in our whole history. That doesn't make things easier when you are hiring employees." According to the

Bureau of Labor Statistics, for the last 15 years the unemployment rate has come down steadily, he says, and the future doesn't promise any relief. In the IT area, job growth is expected to double over the next 10-year period, while general management and top executives will experience a 16 percent growth. "Our labor pools are getting scarcer and scarcer, and it's changing," says Varrone. "The age group that I am in--45 to 65--will grow faster as the baby-boom generation begins to age. Obviously, that's an opportunity and a labor pool you will want to tap into. That would be a change for the publishing industry, where traditionally we tap people from the lower age groups. Maybe we should take a page from Wal-Mart and hire some older people to work for us."