What is happening? The traditional retirement party is being supplanted by the farewell party. The mature executive exodus is underway – not from choice but necessity.
The Australian executive recruitment market is small – too small. We have but two cities with four million inhabitants in each. Compare that to the UK with 60 million souls, add continental Europe into the equation and the arithmetic becomes simple. We are too small a nation to comply with the government’s desire to keep the Baby Boomers working longer.
The Baby Boomers liberalised society, divorce lost its stigma and women became highly qualified with significant careers causing the onset of motherhood to become delayed. Children of first marriages came when the wife was approaching 30; children of second or third marriages were still arriving when she was 40. The impact of the blended family for this aspirational generation means more school fees for longer and consequently a high remuneration, to maintain a comfortable lifestyle plus associated trappings, is a necessity at an age when traditionally one might have thought of retirement or at least of winding back the working day.
Ask any executive recruiter how the marketplace reacts to employing these highly experienced mature individuals and the answer is that it is generally easier to place a younger person. The end result is stressful, to say the least, for many of the families involved.
An increasing number of our friends now work overseas, having been unable to find anything senior enough in Australia. They fly in infrequently to try to maintain contact with their families and make good use of Skype and the webcam between visits. Their partners are forced to carve out an independent existence, often too successfully, with the inevitable consequences.
Others have set up their own consultancies but establishing a clientele has had a similar effect in that they must be prepared to accept contracts which are remote from their home base and reduce them to being weekend visitors in their own home.
What is the solution? The answer is both simple and impossible to achieve. Simply, to achieve the government’s aim requires a radical change in society’s attitude from both the executive recruiter, who is prepared to form a short list including an older age group, and the client who is open minded enough to consider such inclusions. Impossible, because society moves slowly to implement change. The next generation may benefit but the Baby Boomers better bunker down and start preparing tasty meals with leftovers!
Tags: Executive Recruitment Melbourne, Executive recruitment sydney, Executive Search Melbourne, Executive Search Sydney
