'I realise no one will hire me': A 62-year-old's near-miss job offer and Reddit's honest response to ageism in hiring

A post on Reddit’s r/jobs has talked about a 62-year-old man who was laid off last year from an Office Manager role paying US$98,000, and spent seven months sending out 210 resumes. They eventually took a lower-paying position where they are being asked to do work outside their job description, and hate it.

When a position opened at a company where a friend works, they applied, interviewed, received glowing feedback, and were told through their friend that an offer was being prepared.

Then HR got involved. The original poster was redirected to submit through HR. Then came a week of delays. Then came the email: going a different direction.

“I knew it,” they wrote. “They found out about my age and didn’t want to hire me.”

Their resume gives no indication of age — it covers only the past ten years. They look significantly younger than 62. The sequence is hard to interpret as anything other than what the original poster concluded: everything was on track until HR looked them up.

The post ends with something that goes beyond frustration: "I realise no one will hire me. If the perfect job wouldn't hire me because of my age, no one will."

That conclusion — reached after 210 applications, months of effort, a job they hate, and a near-miss that felt like the answer — deserves to be taken seriously. Feeling that no path forward exists is genuinely heavy, and the original poster is carrying a lot. If that weight becomes more than discouragement, it is worth talking to someone — a trusted person, a counsellor, or the Samaritans of Singapore at 1767 for readers here, or 988 in the US.

What Reddit said

Several commenters validated the ageism claim while adding market context.

"I agree with you that ageism is real. The market is also very bad right now. I'm 30, and companies are pulling weird bait-and-switches with me too," one commenter wrote — acknowledging the specific discrimination without minimising it.

One commenter described adapting to the same reality in a way that worked: "I had companies hot and heavy to interview me — but then see me on camera and cut the interview to 15 minutes. I coloured my hair and took ten years of experience off my resume and bam, got a job." It is a practical solution that should not be necessary but apparently is.

Another, at 50 and recently pushed out of their profession, offered a theory about why older workers face resistance beyond simple cost concerns: "They know we can't be manipulated and controlled. They also don't think we can navigate technology. They don't want to pay us our worth."

One commenter was more cautious about drawing firm conclusions: "Ageism exists, but it's hard to tell in this case because the market is bad for everyone." It is a fair point — the current market is producing rejection experiences that look like discrimination but may reflect broader hiring dysfunction. The problem is that for a 62-year-old, the two explanations are impossible to separate cleanly, and the practical outcome is the same either way.

What the post tells us

The original poster did everything right. Their resume was clean, their interview was strong, their reference was excellent, and the people who interviewed them wanted to hire them. The reversal came from a different part of the organisation — the part that runs background checks and looks people up — and produced a different outcome.

Age discrimination in hiring is illegal in most jurisdictions, including the United States under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. It is also genuinely difficult to prove, because employers rarely state age as a reason for a decision. The pattern the original poster describes — enthusiasm, near-offer, then sudden reversal after HR involvement — is one that employment lawyers who specialise in age discrimination would recognise.

The conclusion that "no one will hire me" is understandable given what the original poster has been through. It is also worth resisting, even when it feels airtight. The next opportunity is not the same as this one. But the original poster deserves acknowledgement that what they are experiencing is real, documented, widespread — and genuinely unfair.