h3. One of the country’s fastest-growing and most successful companies, has put out a call for workers aged 40 and above to fill more than 30 vacancies.
thebigword is a multinational translation and interpreting company which provides language services to national governments and some of the world’s biggest companies. Recently named as one of The Sunday Times 100 fastest-growing international companies, it is looking for a wide range of candidates with both industry-specific and more general skills. Currently, employees between ages 40-49 represent only 6.19 percent of thebigword’s 510 employees and those aged 50-plus represent only 3.41 percent. The largest single age group in the company is 25-30 year-olds which comprise 45.5 percent of the company’s workforce.
Joan Redman is a Receptionist/Administrator at thebigword. She joined the company in 2003 and is now in her late fifties. She says: “Older people have more life experience and I find I can advise the younger employees of a better solution or a different approach to whatever problem they are experiencing. I feel I can offer a more grounded opinion rather than an excitable one. The younger people in the company help me keep up-to-date, particularly with all the IT developments and I find they’re very keen to explain things to me and are very generous with their knowledge.”
CEO Larry Gould is also among the 50-plus category. He says: “It’s great to employ young people who bring tremendous energy and excitement to the workplace but we also need to balance this with the experience and considered approach of older employees. Although older people represent a small percentage of our total workforce, they’re amongst our most successful and long-standing employees. What’s frustrating is that we’re not getting good job applications from older people despite this age group suffering from high unemployment.”
thebigword has posted a list of vacancies on its website which include: Account Managers and Business Development Managers, Customer Care Representatives, a PA, Sales and Finance professionals, and Program Developers, as well as Project Managers for its Translation operations. The jobs are in Leeds, London, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Munich, or are home-based.
