Staying Fit
Searching for a job at any age puts most people on a bullet train to Stressville. When you’re 45 or more, a job search can be particularly daunting. If you haven’t looked for a job in years, guess what? Things have changed. A lot. Here are seven of the most common mistakes midlife job hunters make—with tips from recruiters and career experts on how to sidestep them.
1. You Consider Your Age a Detriment, Not an Asset
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At midlife, job seekers often assume potential employers will view their age as a liability, say career coaches and recruiting professionals. But, “the biggest mistake you can make is to disqualify yourself based on the biases of others,” says Ninh Tran, co-founder and chief marketing officer of recruiting platform Hiretual.com. Counter potential ageism by stressing your energy, how you’ve kept current with trends and technologies and the value of your experience, advises consultant and author Barry Maher.
Don’t let an interviewer assume you’ll retire soon. Maher suggests saying, “I’m looking for a company I can stay with and grow,” and “one of the benefits of having a little experience under my belt is that I know what I want in life. I’m not going to jump around from company to company, trying this job and that job.”
Tran adds that age is associated with experience and wisdom, so it’s important “to be likable, be yourself, and if you get the rejection letter, move on to a different company that will appreciate your qualities.”
2. Your Résumé Details Your Early Work History—or Ignores It Completely
While plenty of companies hire workers over 45, age discrimination remains a widespread problem, making it tricky for job applicants to know how much past experience to include during the application or interview process, or in their résumés. How do you show the depth of your experience without looking old?
A brief overview of what you did 20–30 years ago is plenty, says Jane Goodall, résumé writer and career consultant, and you don’t need to give specific dates for jobs from that long ago. “Yes, you may have saved your employer 35 percent in overhead costs back in 1984. But what are your current stats? Life is different, business is different. Focus on the now by emphasizing skills, successes and experience from the past 10 to 15 years that are relevant to the job you’re seeking.”
At the same time, it’s a mistake to only include the most recent decade of your career on your résumé, adds Karla Jobling, chief operating officer of search and recruitment firm BeecherMadden. “As a professional headhunter, it makes me wonder what you might have to hide, which means I’m immediately questioning your honesty,” she explains. “Or, if you’ve made it to the interview stage, I’m annoyed that you’ve not been upfront to begin with. It tells me you didn’t trust that I would be able to see past your age and look at your skills for the job. You then have to work twice as hard to impress me.”
Take just a paragraph to summarize your job experience from more than 15 years ago, focusing on skills and successes that are relevant to the job you’re seeking, says Susan Peppercorn, a career management coach for Positive Workplace Partners. “Many mature job seekers have experienced mergers and acquisitions, change of management, competitive threats and corporate reorganizations, which are as relevant today as they were back in the day.”
3. You Don’t “Get” LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a hugely important social media network for professionals, and experts advise job seekers of all ages—particularly those 45+—to become proficient at optimizing their profiles and using its tools.
For example, if you aren’t familiar with the basics of sending a LinkedIn InMail, it’s easy to accidentally send a message before you’ve finished writing it, says Sonja Hastings, a recruiter for Optimal Sales Search. This can happen when you tap the return or enter key. Deselecting the “press enter to send” button in your LinkedIn message can prevent this error.
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