A free learning resource · Ireland · ten honest minutes

Age at work: the quiz
most people get wrong

Eight questions about how age really works in hiring, performance and the law. Have a guess at each one first — most people get at least five wrong, and the wrong answers are running most workplaces. Every answer comes with its source.

📝 8 questions 📚 Every answer sourced 🙈 Nothing recorded, no email box
THE QUIZ
Answered 0 of 8
WHAT TO DO ON MONDAY

Three things, and none of them
are a training day

You don't need permission or a budget for any of these. The first one is the single best-evidenced fix that exists.

In order of how cheap they are
Ten minutes, one line, one list of questions.
1
Open your last job advert and read it out loud
Look for anything describing a person rather than the work: energy, digital native, fitting the culture, growing with us, recent graduate. Swap each one for what the job actually requires. Keep the old version beside the new one — that comparison is your evidence that anything changed.
2
Write one line when you say no
At the moment you screen a CV out, write the reason. One line. Not for the candidate — for the version of you in nine months who is asked why. A reason reconstructed later is the weakest evidence there is.
3
Ask every candidate the same questions, in the same order
Agree the questions before you meet anyone and score each answer as you go. Duller, slower — and it predicts performance more than twice as well, because personal charm counts for less and evidence counts for more. It also leaves a record without any extra work.
IF THIS IS HAPPENING TO YOU

And if you're the one being written off

Most of this page talks to the people doing the hiring. This box is for you.

Four things worth knowing
None of this is legal advice — but all of it is real.
1.You can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission yourself, for free, without a solicitor. The time limit is normally 6 months from the discrimination, so don't sit on it. The complaint form is on workplacerelations.ie.
2.Since 29 June 2026, asking to work to 66 is protected. If your contract retires you earlier, you can refuse to consent — and punishing you for asking (dismissal, demotion, being moved aside) is itself against the law.
3.You don't have to do it alone. Your union, Citizens Information, and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission all give free guidance — and Age Action advocates on exactly this.
4.Ask for the reason in writing. Whatever the decision was — the job, the course, the retirement date — a written reason is the one thing every process in this quiz was missing. You're allowed to ask for it.
AND IF YOU WANT TO FEEL IT · A GAME

One hire. Three sides of it.

Knowing the numbers is one thing. This is the other: the same job and the same four moments, played from inside. Pick a side. At each step you'll see what the other two lived through. There's no right answer and nobody is the villain — that's rather the point.

Moment 1 of 4
Send this to someone who hires people

It works better passed sideways than handed down. If one manager takes the quiz before writing their next advert, it has done its job.

Copied. Thank you.
Sandra Fedakova
Founder, Vedomia Ltd — Midleton, Co. Cork
I facilitate workshops and map how organisations actually work — every step, who decides, and what evidence is left behind.
vedomia.com