Caroline Hirons, 57, founder of SkinRocks, is the outspoken queen of skincare, dubbed “the most powerful voice in the British beauty industry”. Born in Liverpool, she trained as an aesthetician in Paris and went on to found her eponymous beauty blog in 2010, at the age of 40.
In her latest column for The i Paper, Caroline shares her thoughts on ageism in the workplace, being a 57-year-old boss, and why she hires a certain kind of Gen Z.
I would hire someone who is 50 over a Gen Z any day of the week. Especially if they’re a woman who has multitasked her whole adult life. There’s nothing that you can’t give a busy woman in our office that won’t get done well, and efficiently. It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason. Legally, of course, someone doesn’t have to list their age on their application form, and you can’t ask them, and I’ve never hired anyone based on age – but when someone’s been in the working world for a while, and they just come across as someone who can get stuff done, you can really tell.
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Someone in their fifties is likely to be better at communicating, and they’ll pick up the phone with no qualms. This is obviously a sweeping generalisation but I do also find that older people are better at taking responsibility and going, “Yep, that’s on me, that’s my bad”, because there’s not the same fear of messing up. When you’ve lived a life, your fears are honed in on the really important things. Taking responsibility immediately is something that someone slightly older tends to do.
