When I posted on LinkedIn recently about AI hiring tools, I expected a few likes and maybe a polite emoji. Instead, I got a support group.

One highly experienced professional wrote that AI screeners reject her automatically. Another had stopped looking for work altogether and was still trying to reclaim her sense of self-worth. An executive who isn't even 50 yet noticed that senior job postings that once asked for 15 years of experience now ask for five to seven. She wondered whether AI was quietly filtering out anyone with more.

I've run a platform for women over 50 for almost ten years, and I'm in this demographic myself. I've heard versions of these stories for a long time. What's new is who's doing the filtering. At least the old version had to look you in the eye.

The Gate Has Gone Digital

Many employers now run applications through screening software before a human gets involved. A lot of those tools learn from past hiring decisions, which means they can learn our old biases too, and apply them at scale.

The courts are starting to look. In a lawsuit against Workday, one of the biggest names in HR software, a federal judge allowed an age discrimination claim to move forward as a nationwide collective action on behalf of applicants 40 and older. The plaintiff says he was turned down for more than 100 jobs at companies using its screening tools. Workday says the case is without merit, and it hasn't been decided.

Sometimes the bias isn't learned at all. Somebody types it in. A few years ago, a tutoring company settled with the EEOC, which said its application system was set to automatically reject women 55 and older. Men got until 60. Apparently we expire first.

The Assumption Behind the Gate

Every one of these filters runs on the same assumption. Older workers are behind on technology, and they won't catch up.

Here's what makes me crazy. Inside companies, that assumption is manufacturing its own evidence.

AARP surveyed workers 50 and older this year. Only 12% have had any AI training at work. Nearly half, 49%, said they want it. In a separate AARP study, 46% of employers said most or all of their decisions about where and how to use AI are made by employees 40 and older. Companies trust our judgment to steer the technology. They just aren't teaching us to use it.

Follow that through. We don't get the training, so we use AI less. Using it less becomes proof we can't keep up. That proof shapes the next layoff list and the next hiring filter. Then the whole thing starts over.

AARP's own researcher concluded that low AI use among older workers comes from a mismatch between training, job tasks, and workplace practices. Resistance and ability have very little to do with it.

So I don't see the gate and the training gap as two separate problems. They feed each other. Which also means every move we make against one weakens the other.

How to Get Past the Gate

We can't rewrite the software. We can stop handing it reasons to say no.

Name your tools. The filter assumes we're behind on technology, so answer that before it asks. List the AI tools you actually use on your resume and LinkedIn profile, by name, right next to Excel, which, for the record, we've been using since it came on floppy disks. A line like "use AI tools to draft and analyze client reports" retires the stereotype without a word of argument.

Let AI help you get past AI. Screening software looks for a match between your application and the job posting. An AI tool can compare the two in seconds and show you which words and skills you're missing. You still do the rewriting. You just stop guessing. There's a certain poetry in using the robot to sweet-talk the robot.

Arrive with a name attached. The filter is easiest to beat before you hit submit. Reach out to someone at the company first, then apply and let them know. Plenty of hiring managers will go looking for an application a colleague mentioned. Our networks are the one thing these tools can't score.

Get the training wherever you are. If you're employed, ask for AI training in writing: "I'd like to be included in the team's AI training. When is the next session?" If you're between jobs, most major AI tools have free versions, and twenty minutes a day on something real adds up fast. Within a few weeks, you'll have real examples to put on your resume and talk about in an interview.

Keep receipts. We're the generation that kept every receipt in a shoebox, so put that skill to work. Federal law protects workers 40 and older from age discrimination, and that protection doesn't disappear when a program does the rejecting. If you think you were screened out because of your age, save the posting, the dates, and every response.

Experience Was Never the Problem

Most of us learned email, then spreadsheets, then smartphones, then Zoom in about a week in 2020. We've been learning new tools our whole working lives. This is one more.

So when a system decides we can't, I say we prove it wrong where people can see it. And we keep asking, in writing, why the people with the most experience are the last ones handed the training.

I'd rather spend my energy learning the tool than proving I'm allowed to.

About the Author
Jacqueline (Jack) Perez, is the founder of Kuel Life, a digital space created to change how we talk about growing older as women. Her work covers everything from navigating health changes and starting over professionally to managing relationships, starting fresh, and tapping into the immense financial influence of a demographic the culture constantly overlooks.