Corporate folks call it the “gray ceiling,” the career advancement barrier many older workers face in a work world seemingly dominated by the young.

A recent survey of nearly 300 executives found that 72 percent believe age discrimination in the workplace has increased during the past five years. Most of them, 90 percent, blame that on the weak economy and mass job cutting by many big companies.

Sixty-five percent said they had encountered age discrimination in a job search, up from 58 percent in a similar 2001 poll. Nearly three-fourths of those, 73 percent, said they were unable to overcome the interviewer’s concerns regarding age.

The survey was conducted by the Connecticut-based search firm ExecuNet, which offers older job seekers a few tips:

– Focus on how past experiences will help you address specific problems facing the company.

– Illustrate your awareness, understanding, and comfort with relevant technology.

– Be conscious of your energy level, and how your speech, walk and posture demonstrate this to the interviewer.

CORPORATE PERSONALITY: Are companies like people, with personalities and quirks? Plenty of workers think so, according to an online evaluation model thousands of people have completed about their employers.

Nearly a third of companies fit a “passive-aggressive” profile, one of seven categories used to describe organizations. The next most common type was “overmanaged,” the description for 18 percent of companies under data workers provided online.

Passive-aggressive companies are congenial, with minimal conflicts among workers, but they still resist meaningful change, said Gary Neilson, a senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a New York-based management consultancy that developed the program.

“Building a consensus to make major changes is no problem; it’s implementing them that proves difficult,” he said. “Line employees tend to ignore mandates from headquarters, assuming “This too shall pass.”‘

The evaluation model was completed by more than 3,100 employees, with about half of them calling themselves middle or senior managers.

AP-ES-12-23-03 1639EST