Make the Most of Your Experience
By: Carole Fleck Source: AARP Bulletin Today Date Posted: January 2006
Pat Stubbs figured he'd retire at age 55. But at 64 he isn't lounging around sipping lemonade in the afternoon sun. He's working to pay off a student loan.
Stubbs, who has spent most of his career in computer technology as a software designer, programmer and trainer, was laid off four years ago and returned to college to upgrade his resumé and skills. Since the mid-1980s, the San Jose, Calif., resident hasn't stayed in the same job longer than three years because of hard times in the industry. "This is Silicon Valley," he says. "You learn not to take it personally. You just move on."
For older adults like Stubbs, moving on and finding work are time-consuming and challenging. According to the latest AARP research, it will take longer to land a job if you're 55 or older—26 weeks on average compared with 19 weeks for younger job seekers.
"Generally, the trend is, as one hits 50, 55, 60, with each of those milestones, it's much harder to rebound after a job loss," says John McDorman, managing partner at Transition Consulting in Dallas, a corporate recruitment firm that runs workshops for midlife job seekers. "It's more difficult to find a job," he says, "and you have to settle for something less because of the length of the job search" and mounting financial pressures.
Recruiters like McDorman increasingly are providing older job hunters with strategies for landing a position sooner rather than later. McDorman says he advises people to concentrate their search on newer and smaller companies, which tend to hire more mature workers. "You're looking for companies that value wisdom," he says. "Younger companies can't gamble on some green bean trying to figure out things as he goes."
Jan Cannon, founder of Cannon Career Development in Boston, says she tells her boomer clients to repackage themselves, starting with their resumés. "A resumé should always be focused on where you're heading," she says, "not a laundry list of where you've been."
Overcoming age biases of hiring managers may be the biggest test for older job seekers, says Washington labor economist Marc Bendick Jr. In an AARP-funded study he did in the mid-1990s, which he says "absolutely holds true for today," resumés of equally qualified job applicants with identical skills were sent to 1,000 of the largest U.S. companies. Half the applicants were age 57, the other half were 32.
"When they did get a reply, the younger worker got called for an interview when the older worker did not," Bendick says. "The companies weren't even interested in interviewing older workers."
Many fiftysomethings who've been pink-slipped have been forced to start their own businesses, either because they can't find work or they refuse to take a job lower in stature and salary than their previous positions.
But the employment landscape may be changing in their favor. Economic forecasters predict older workers will be in greater demand within the decade as the work force ages. By 2008, 40 percent of workers will be age 45 or older. "Despite the current frustrating job picture for many older workers, opportunities are going to open up in the years ahead as a huge wave of [retiring] boomers leave the work force," says David DeLong, a consultant and author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce (Oxford University Press, 2004).
In the meantime, career advisers say, mature workers should look for opportunities during job interviews to deflect age-related stereotypes. Go ahead and promote your wisdom and experience, show enthusiasm for the job, but above all, watch your attitude.
"There's a lot of fear that people who are older will be bossy," Cannon says. "You have to play down that I-know-the-answer attitude, or that I'm-so-much-smarter-than-you attitude. You have to be friendly, soft, gentle."
Adds consultant Carolyn Martin of Rainmaker Thinking, a New Haven, Conn., company specializing in generational workplace issues: "The stereotype is that older workers are looking toward retirement or looking for a part-time job." She says midlife job seekers must show that they can add value immediately. "They have to say, 'Here's what I can offer you today, [and] how I can fit into the team.' "
That's advice Pat Stubbs has come to live by. In 2004 he earned a doctorate in distance education and instructional technology. His reward: two job offers in 2005. He is now an employee trainer at Orchard Supply Hardware, a California chain.
"I'm my own best endorsement for lifelong learning. I'm still paying off the student loan," Stubbs says with a chuckle. "It's a 10-year loan. I have nine more years to go."
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