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Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm John Norrinson.

Today we're in France, which is trying to do something about this sort of thing.

Finally, I received an email saying, we are deeply sorry, but your experience, seniority, they said in French, is too high considering the team, and it won't fit with the team.

Ageism. France has some of the worst employment statistics in the world for older workers, and that's one of the reasons.

We are a long way from ancient Greece, where the senior was a wise person, a knowledgeable

person, the reference person. When we meet a senior, the best thing we can think of to say

is that they don't look their age, which shows immediately that we have a problem with age.

Ageism is bad for state finances, for companies it's a waste of talent.

For the individuals in question, apart from the financial precarity it often involves,

comes the sense of injustice and not being judged on their merits.

We'll be looking at how the French government is fighting what it calls the last discrimination, challenging the language we use, for example. We'll be visiting

a tech company that does things differently and have advice for you if you're in the 50-60 zone

and looking for a job, apart from saying AI in every sentence, obviously. That's don't call me senior, coming up in Business Daily.

Recruit someone over 50, not likely, says an employer in this public service announcement,

and her friend replies that he hired an over 50 called Sophie,

who turned out to be his most reliable employee

and the one who masters AI the best.

In a co-working space in Paris's prosperous, thrusting and very officy Mero Menel neighborhood,

Geraldine Cochon, 55, prints out her CV for the zillionth time.

For her, things are not going as well as they did for Sophie, really not.

I used to be, and I am still a marketing communication director for the B2B sector.

...