Maybe your company wants to know more about a new candidate, or you need to know exactly how much time they've spent within the industry. The way that you broach the subject of someone's age in an interview is important so that you don't risk being perceived as discriminatory.
A recent piece for Business Insider quotes author Lynn Taylor on the way that asking about age can lead to illegal discrimination. This is why businesses embarking on the executive recruitment process need to respect the ways that theoretically innocent questions might be perceived.
"Some hiring managers discriminate outright against older workers and ask this question to figure out if [the candidate is] they're approaching retirement age," she said. "If you're a younger job seeker, the interviewer may ask your age to figure out just how low of a salary they can get away with offering you."
The important thing isn't a candidate's age so much as the CEO experience that your business is interested in. The interview process can go awry if this intention is misrepresented and if the candidate is not treated professionally.
According to information from Statistic Brain, the average age of the Fortune 500 CEO is 55, and if a company goes into the recruitment process with this or a similar frame of reference in mind, it might color the way they interact with the candidate.
If experience is truly more important, then companies can come up with a better series of questions that identifies this quality instead. Or, more accurately, they can trust in the work of an executive recruiter to find the most qualified candidates.
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