Looking for a job? Follow Robert De Niro’s lead, says MAGGIE PAGANO

In the hit film The Intern, Robert De Niro plays the role of Ben Whittaker, a 70-year-old widower and retired marketing executive.

Ben decides that retirement isn’t as great as he’d hoped, so he applies for a job as a senior intern at About The Fit, a trendy online fashion start-up in Brooklyn run by workaholic CEO Jules Ostin, played by Anne Hathaway.

His brash charm and wise manner quickly win over the skeptical staff, and before you know it, he’s transformed Ostin’s hectic work schedule and saved her marriage.

This being Hollywood, there are morals to be drawn. It’s hard to find a new job, whether you’re old or retired, so coworkers have to be careful not to stereotype.

More importantly, it is good for people from different generations to work side by side in the workplace.

Employers – and employees – would do well to learn from these lessons if we want to break through the crisis that is ravaging our labour market. Since the pandemic, there have been around one million ‘missing workers’, while the number of ‘economically inactive’ due to illness and disability has skyrocketed to 2.8 million.

Yet there are around 1.7 million people – many in the 50+ age bracket – who would love to work. But many feel unable to do so, either because they lack the skills or, indeed, the self-confidence of the Bens of the world.

If you’re over 50, you’re two and a half times more likely than younger age groups to have been out of work for at least two years. What’s going to get them back in the saddle? For starters, they should channel their inner De Niro.

Lucy Standing, a licensed psychologist, encourages people to find work in unconventional ways in a job market she believes is broken.

In a concept known as “sweat equity,” she says people should work for free—or, in rare cases, even pay for the experience of shadowing an expert. In exchange for the time they invest, they get job titles and a chance to learn something new.

It’s a concept Standing champions at Brave Starts, the nonprofit she runs that coaches about 540 middle-aged professionals, from doctors to carpenters, who want to change their lives.

Some retrain or start their own businesses: ‘I’ve had engineers who dream of running a B&B in the Lakes, for example. So I encourage them to do that for a week or two. Most are disillusioned. But it’s a wake-up call.’ Conventional recruitment doesn’t do any of this, and the sector is ripe for disruption. In fact, most recruiters are so rude that they don’t respond to applicants – another reason job seekers are so desperate.

The irony is that in an era where everyone is obsessed with diversity, age diversity gets almost no attention. Which is bizarre, because the one thing we can all be certain of, other than death and taxes, is growing old.

Yet getting older people back into work is essential for their wellbeing, as well as the country’s prosperity. By 2039, almost half of the UK’s workforce will be over 45.

Over the past 20 years, the number of working people over the age of 50 has almost doubled to 10.7 million – almost a third of the total working population.

Which is why it’s so surprising that Labour – which claims to be the most worker-friendly in generations – doesn’t even dare mention this ticking time bomb. It’s not as big a problem as it seems. As The Intern’s ad poster put it: Experience Never Gets Old.

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