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By Geoffrey Brewer
The New York Times, June 22, 2000 

Older employees don't work hard. They don't have the stamina of their younger colleagues. They are overpaid and marking time before they pack up for a life of golf or shuffleboard in Florida.

Such are the misperceptions that vex people like Hank Merrill. Two years ago, at age 58, Mr.Merrill lost his job as a sales manager with Bank of America when the company was acquired by NationsBank. Though he had more than enough money to retire, he wanted to keep working. But he had no illusions about the job search that lay ahead. "I knew people are skeptical of hiring someone over 50," Mr. Merrill said. "People assume you don't have drive and energy." One employer who rejected him essentially questioned his work ethic, he said.

But at least one executive recruiter saw gold where others saw gray. Joel Harrison, a managing partner with the recruiting firm of DAK Associates in Conshohocken, Pa., said he was impressed with Mr. Merrill’s business connections and high energy. "I thought that this guy would outperform people 10 and 15 years younger than him," Mr. Harrison said.

He was right. Since DAK placed him as a West Coast regional vice president at Nuveen Investments, the Chicago-based financial services wholesaler, Mr. Merrill as become the company's top sales representative in the country. And all his colleagues are at least 20 years younger.

"Hank has tons of credibility," said his boss, Michael Forstl, 38, a managing director at Nuveen Headquarters. "If you have been in the business that long, you develop fantastic relationships in a world that is very small."

The rejuvenation of Mr. Merrill's career holds a lesson for employers in today's tight job market : Older folks can be worth the extra money you have to pay them. They bring years of experience and connections to the table, and they often surprise their new bosses by showing nearly as much get-up-and-go as their younger colleagues.

Plus, they have demographics on their side. According to the Census Bureau, the number of 20-to-34-year-olds in the United States has declined by 6 million the last decade while the number of people over 50 will increase by 21 million more, while the number of 20-to-34-year-olds will increase by only 4 million. " There has simply been a shrinkage of available young workers and an increase in older workers," said Ken Dychtwald, a psychologist and author of "Age Power : How the 21st Century will Be Ruled by the New Old" (Tarcher/Putnam, 1999).

Moreover, he said, as Americans lead longer and healthier lives, people are beginning to ask this fundamental question: What is old?

An increasing number of companies are adjusting to the changing dynamics of the job market by dipping deeper into the over-50 pool of talent. DAK, a 10-person firm that specializes in recruiting managers for financial services companies like New York Life, Salomon Brothers Asset Management and J & W Seligman, says the proportion of people it places who are in that age group has soared to 20 percent today for just 5 percent a decade ago.

"This is a robust part of our business," said Daniel A. Kreuter, the president and founder of DAK. "It expands out inventory."

Employer interest in older employees is particular sharp in the people over 50 control two-thirds of the money invested in the stock market and like dealing with people in their own age group, Dr. Dychtwald increasingly demand people who are experience and responsible and have a long track record," he said.

Maybe so, but that does not mean that those same people won't have to fight stereotypes, as even their advocates acknowledge. "There's been a mindset that wholesaling is a young person's game, that only 25-to-35-years-old would not want to sleep in hotels four nights a week and work 75 hours a week," Mr. Kreuter said. "Then when they burn out at 40, you get the new crop in."

Mr. Merrill seems determined to debunk the stereotypes. He travels four or five days a week, meeting with up to five clients a day. He routinely is up at 5:30 a.m. and usually runs five miles before work. He competes in triathlons, has run in marathons and rides his mountain bike about 2,500 miles a year.

Mr. Merrill's "sheer stamina" makes him effective, according to Mr. Forstl. "Success in this business comes from sweat, from getting in front of as many brokers as possible," he said.

Older workers in other industries are thriving, too. Some, like Hershel Sarbin, 75, tried retirement and didn't like it. When they seek to return to the real world of work, they often find a welcome mat waiting.

Mr. Sarbin has actually returned twice, the first time in 1984 when he was 59 and left his job as a senior vice president at the Ziff Corporation in New York to dabble in teaching and consulting work. " I felt instantly restless," he said. "I missed not being engaged in critical business issues. I missed the phone calls. I missed the action."

So, when a consulting client, Cowles Media, offered him the position of chief executive in 1990, he grabbed it. At age 65, Mr. Aarbin headed a turnaround effort in which Cowles acquired or started a host of magazines and newsletters and developed several Internet properties. Within three years, the publishing company's revenue shot up 300 percent.

In 1995, Mr. Sarbin tried retirement again. Again, he did some consulting work; again, he felt a void in his life. So, in 1998, he signed on as a senior director with another consulting client, the Peppers & Rogers Group, a marketing consulting firm in Stamford, Conn. The firm was looking to develop online and print publishing properties and saw Mr. Sarbin, who had more than 30 years of media experience, as the right candidate. Mr. Sarbin now heads a 25-person division that produces a print and online newsletter and a magazine. Next month, he is scheduled to start an information service that provides verbatim extracts online of marketing-related books and articles.

Oh, and he gives up to 15 speeches a year on marketing topics.

"It's not often that 75-year-old men are invited to sit down and talk with 25-year-old dot-com experts and strategize about where the market is going," Mr. Sarbin said. " I don't have to seek them out, they come to me. Why would I ever want to retire?"

If he and others can refute the oldcodger image with their energy, they might find it harder to overcome potential employers' reluctance to pay them big salaries. Older wholesalers in the financial services trade - basically, the people who sell financial products to stockbrokers and financial advisers - can earn as much as $500,000 a year, while sellers under 30 may earn less than $100,000. " Wholesalers like me with a proven track record are too expensive," said Robert Meitzer, 53, who was recruited by DAK to work at the Allmerica Financial Corporation in Worcester, Mass., where he is now a senior vice president and a top seller.

Like Mr. Merrill and Mr. Sarbin, Mr. Meitzer has more than 30 years of experience in his industry. Like them, he could afford to retire but loves working. And like them, he is a case study in the value that old-timers can give to a company. Aside from the $340 million in business he brought Allmerica last year, Mr. Meitzer acts as a mentor to younger sellers, a contribution that can pay large, if hard-to-measure, dividends.

"Just ask Oliver Tutt, 30, a fellow sales representative at Allmerica who traveled frequently with Mr. Meitzer for three years and eagerly soaked up the older man's insights. "You face so much rejection in this business, from brokers mistreating you to them just forgetting about your appointments, that it's tough to keep your sanity," Mr. Tutt said. "Bob taught me to value myself and have self-confidence and chalk bad meetings up to experience."

Mr. Meitzer says the most important lesson he can teach the younger generation - many of whom have never gone through a recession - is to take the long view of markets. "I remember the bear market of 1971 to 1974 and learned that it's important to be diversified across stocks," he said. "I was able to see the current market's volatility before it happened . I saw that the bubble of the late 1990's was going to burst."

Granted, some older people do fit the stereotypes associated with them, and employers must evaluate job candidates carefully. "There are certain things we look for," Mr. Krueter of DAK said. :People can get burnt out or cynical, and maybe not be open to new strategies or ideas" - or to the latest Internet technology.

That goes for Mr. Merrill, the Nuveen employee who in most ways is a star performer. He hashad "a hard time understanding our computer system," said Mr. Forstl, his boss, and relies on his sales assistant to gather information from the company's database.

Mr. Merrill cheerfully acknowledges his shortcomings. "We have a system here that they like us to use, but I don't like it and don't use it," he said. "I have my own system."

But such drawbacks are relatively minor, Mr. Kreuter said. "Good people over 50 have wisdom and experience, and that's what matters most," he said. "Gray hair counts for something."