So when are you too old – in business?
I was recently watching a TV series called “Hell’s Kitchen,” a reality TV show featuring Gordon Ramsey mentoring a group of want-to-be chefs where each week a chef is eliminated until a finalist wins some cash and a spot as an Executive Chef in one of Ramsey’s exclusive restaurants.
Season by season Chef Ramsey singled out the absolute best chefs from the group based on their ability to control the kitchen, create and execute top class delights and on their natural talent in the kitchen. Some really fantastic cooks were transformed throughout the 13 week seasons into true executive chef material. In fact, some even impressed from start to finish… but in each final he selected the younger of the two finalists, usually a young lady in her 20’s.
Is he just a pig or was he selecting the right chef for the right reasons? He stated at the end of one season that he chose the younger of the two (the second only being mid-late thirties) because she would be easier to shape, mold and train as his Executive Chef.
So when is old too old? 30? 35? At what point are you no longer able to be shaped and molded, trained into a fierce working machine? Is this the trend?
In my personal experience with marketing departments and agencies I have worked with there were only a handful of over 30’s and several of them started with the company in their late 20’s. When did seasoning and experience become a bad quality? Even many companies owned by friends have teams or flocks of 20 somethings running about. Do these recently adolescent young men and women hold the secret to eternal youth? Do they make management feel young again? Are their results so much better than the 30 and 40 somethings? Is it a cost issue – Do you get what you pay for?
I think as the world turns and technology makes things faster and smaller so too has the HR mentality changed to younger and younger. They have unlimited reasons why younger is better and it always seems justified at the time, but is it? When is older better?
I think this mentality is flawed, younger may mean hungrier at times, may mean they will start for less, but I know that the mistakes and teachings of my 20’s made me the well rounded man I am today at 31. Many who know me or knew me in my 20’s remember a lot of good and bad traits about me as a person, but more importantly, me as a business man. I think many of the good traits still exist a decade later, but as a good wine or cheese become much robust with age, more mature and more ready to really experience life from both a passive and active side. I do not feel any less hungry for success, but I have learned how to be successful in a more positive meaningful way.
I simply have a library of experiences to reference about reading people, understanding problematic situations, reacting to needs of others that I did not have a decade ago.
While by Gordon Ramsey’s standards, I might be a dinosaur at 31 – I hold out hope that the trend of entrusting titles like executive chef to 20 somethings will turn and as with all things that are great in life (beef, cheese, wine) people will begin to once again appreciate the wisdom of a decade or two.
Do you have 20 somethings working for you? Why? Would you hire a 20 something over a 30 something? Please share your thoughts!
