Sage: Enabling Aging Workers to Excel in the Modern Job Market
Our Vision
A world where the job-hunting process pays attention to the specific needs of aging workers and an empowered workplace that effectively manages the impacts of ageism.
Early Adopters:
- Aging workers between the ages of 40-60
- Retired workers 60+ looking to re-enter the workforce
Problem Statement
After speaking to several working professionals, and running an analysis on over 10,000 data science job posts, we discovered that current job posts are flooded with age-unfriendly language which impacts the diversity of the candidate pool. Furthermore, job post assessment tools do not adequately account for the needs of aging workers, often addressing gender or race related bias. This results in leaving out a chunk of the population that may be highly qualified, experienced, and wise. Aging workers may not feel confident pursuing modern work or understand which skills they need to highlight to be considered for IT related positions, often leaving them wondering if there is space for them at all.
Our Capstone Solution
We have designed a product called Sage, which addresses our problem statement by leveraging a Natural Language Processing model that easily sifts through job posts and detects age-unfriendly language. The model is built into a larger front-end browser plug-in that highlights the terms detected on a scale of least harmful to very harmful while also adding in a set of functionality that improves the user experience for older workers (i.e. font size and color contrast adjuster, speech-to-text job application form filler, and help buttons). We believe Sage will assist older workers navigating online sites and specifically enables aging workers looking to re-enter and navigate the job market with attention to the needs that the elderly face. Our solution aims to address the following:
- Difficulty re-entering the workforce after a gap in work
- Trouble updating skill sets to match modern job descriptions
- Struggle finding companies to apply where age discrimination does not exist
- A learning curve in adjusting to conventions of tech-centric work culture
The scope of our project will focus on alleviating the impacts of ageism on job seekers as they search for jobs online. We aim to make the job search process simpler, quicker, and more successful for older individuals.
