It's hard to find a job at 30-35 years old, should I retire?

The staff in many companies, especially start-ups, are mostly young people. Some companies even have 100% of their staff aged 20-30. The company's leaders are also young people - Illustration: MY LE

Duy Minh is the production manager of a mechanical engineering company in Ho Chi Minh City. The four people older than him are the director, deputy director and two warehouse managers. The remaining employees and direct production workers are mostly in their 20s and 30s.

When the company is full of young people

Before applying for this position, Mr. Minh was one of the people who was cut from a joint venture tobacco company after the COVID-19 pandemic. He had a hard time finding a job in early 2023.

Mr. Minh said that at that time, companies were cutting jobs en masse, there wasn't much work and he had to compete with a lot of young people.

He was lucky to be recruited because he had the advantage of having worked as a production manager in a company in the same industry. The new company was in the process of building a factory and needed someone with experience in setting up production machinery and recruiting workers.

Currently, when directly recruiting for many positions, Minh admits that if he were to recruit personnel for the same position with the same salary, he would choose a 25 year old instead of a 35 year old.

"Young people, Gen Z people today, have the ability to learn and adapt much faster," Minh said.

Minh Phuong (30 years old) - in charge of the communications team of a real estate company - said that her team of 14 people only has two designers in their 40s, the rest are all 9X, the youngest born in 2001.

"I see that many companies now hardly have many 7X people (45 years old and up), except for management positions. Even managers in many places now are sometimes only 28 - 29 years old.

Young managers tend to hire younger people when building teams to make it easier to work with. Perhaps that's why it's harder for people in their 40s and 50s to apply for an employee position," Phuong said.

After 35 years old, do I have to retire?

On recruitment forums, many people share the difficulties of being unemployed at the age of 30-35 and having to spend months sending out resumes to dozens of companies to find a job.

A 35-year-old young mother said she had just gotten out of unemployment after 5 months of searching for a job. She quit her job at the company she had worked for 8 years because she was "owed several months of salary and several years of other debts, and had to take on the work of several people."

"During my job search, I often felt hopeless and even suicidal, but thinking about my child made me try to get up. The reason a multi-talented employee like me was not hired was because I was over 30 years old.

Some companies only require people aged 25-30. By following the forum, I found out that many people are in the same situation. I didn't expect that staff or senior positions would be unfilled so soon. It's so sad," she shared.

Many people in the same situation have left comments sharing and sympathizing with her.

- Congratulations. I'm 32 years old, also struggling to find a job, thinking about it every day, not sleeping well, disappointed with myself for not being able to find a job.

- I also changed jobs because the company owed me a few months of salary at the end of last year. With 7 years of experience, I thought it would be easy to change jobs. But the job postings all required people under 30 years old. It was really stressful. I've been working for more than 2 months.

- I'm 89. Just brought my CV to the interview. The market is tough. They don't want to hire 34-35 year olds.

- Working for a big company is like that. I worked at my old company from the age of 20 and quit at 32. During those 12 years, many people left. When you are over 30, if you do not have the ability to be a boss, it is almost difficult to get a job as an employee.

Many people are in a situation where they have to quit their job because the company owes them wages, withholds their wages, and are stressed when they can't find a job.

"Sometimes I think that people over 30 shouldn't quit their jobs. Because when I quit my job and look for another one, I often see age requirements like that. But I'm 38 and still job-hopping.

No one wants to go to work and fly around from place to place, but if a company owes you salary or something, do you have to keep swallowing the bitter pill?

"Depending on the job position, recruit at an appropriate age. If all jobs require you to be 35 years old or older, I'll probably have to retire now," a frustrated person shared.

Do you notice that it is increasingly difficult for people over 30 to find jobs? Are you having trouble because of the wave of layoffs? Please share your story with us at hongtuoi@tuoitre.com.vn. Tuoi Tre Online thanks you.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/30-35-tuoi-da-kho-tim-viec-khong-le-phai-nghi-huu-20240418140032162.htm