Although it is illegal to discriminate based upon age, it happens all the time. Employers feel that younger people are more energetic and have new ideas. They see those over 50 as having more health problems. Or, a younger manager might feel awkward leading someone who is much older. Whatever the reason, it happens frequently. What is a person in their 50s supposed to do? If this is you then you know all too well how desperate the situation can be. Here is some advice that can help you overcome this subtle discrimination.
Self-employment is a viable option for many over 50. You may have a skill where you can forget about working for someone else and go at it on your own. For example, if you were in construction, you can go into business as a handyperson and travel from home to home fixing problems. If you have some writing ability, the internet has expanded opportunities for freelance writers like never before. The reality is that you may not find a job like you had before. And, there is a danger that you can fall into serious financial difficulty if you spend all of your time trying to find that job to replace the one you lost without generating income. Self-employment allows you to generate income while you are trying to find a full-time job.
If self-employment is not an option, make yourself appear younger. People in their 50s know the battles they have with being overweight, wrinkles, and hair turning gray. Some just give up on their condition and do nothing to slow it down. Being overweight will give an employer the impression that you are not physically fit and will not be able to keep up with the tense pace of the job. There are things you can do to battle the effects of aging. First, you can start exercising three times a week. It doesn’t have to be at an expensive gym. Second, you can use moisturizing cream on your skin if it is dry or get a little sun if your skin appears pale. Next, coloring your hair will get rid of the gray and men should lose the facial hair as this definitely makes them look older. And lastly, get some new clothes that are up-to-date, color coordinated with you, and fit well–not too tight and not too loose.
Modernize yourself and focus on actions. There is no need to list every job you have had over the years on your resume. Work experience in your oldest employment is oftentimes not relevant today. If an employer has called you in for an interview, he obviously saw that you have some experience he is looking for. Try to identify specific examples of where you applied that experience and what the outcome was. If you can, think of some new ideas of how you would apply that experience again. Focus on actions, results, and staying up-to-date with latest trends. Bring new ideas to the table. This is what employers are looking for.
Too often in our society, finding jobs without a degree is portrayed as something that is impossible. This is not true because many employers know that experience often weighs more than a degree. Yes, there are projects that simulate real life scenarios in college programs however anyone who has a degree will tell you that the real world is much different. And yes, there are employers who look at a college degree as the one deciding factor between two highly qualified job candidates. But it is still possible to find jobs without a degree and they can be good jobs too.
Degreed people will sometimes get paid more. However, there are no guarantees that a college degree ensures a higher level of pay. The general attitude in the labor force is that completing education has value and that equates to higher pay. But there is no rule that an employer has to subscribe to this way of thinking. If you do not have a degree but you prove you are valuable to the company then your pay can many times be just as high if not higher than your college educated coworkers.
Tell your employer you are working on your college education. One good workaround to getting jobs without a degree is enrolling in a community college program and telling your potential employer that you are actively seeking a degree. If you have the required skills and experience for a particular job, the fact that you are working on a degree is oftentimes just as good as having one.
Joining the military is one way to get experience. Joining the military doesn’t work for everyone but it is an option nonetheless. The more technical branches of the military service like the Air Force and Navy have many specialties where you can get good experience that you could never get in college. Employers quite often consider military experience just as valuable as a degree and will hire you right away if you meet the other qualifications for a job.
Volunteering is a way to get experience today. If you don’t want to join the military then being a volunteer is another great way to get hands-on experience in a career field. Many employers have student intern programs that could be paid or unpaid but they allow you to get experience while you are in high school. The biggest downside to volunteering is that you have to find some way to sustain yourself.
Analyze your life experiences carefully. You may have experience that can be easily transferred into a new career. For example, professional language translators sometimes have degrees in the languages they translate. However, there are translators who studied their additional language over a number of years in elementary, middle, and high school. Some actually lived in foreign countries and studied the language that they want to translate there. These experiences, while not certified by an educational institution, are oftentimes stronger than those from a college academic program. You will find that many professional language translators do not have degrees in translation or languages at all.
Many people will consider making career changes in the workforce today. The sluggish economy along with a general shortage of jobs dictates it. But making career changes is not easy–especially for those in the middle of their careers. It is not impossible but requires planning and determination. Let’s look at some considerations to make when making career changes.
Evaluate your reasons for wanting to make a career change. People don’t just make career changes without good reason. In today’s economy, the biggest reason why people change what they do is because they cannot find a job in their old career. Corporate downsizing and outsourcing of jobs overseas have created this situation so the employee is forced to change. There are other reasons you might want to change as well. A person’s need to change their career may also be due to financial requirements. In other words, their life changed and they need to make more money but their current career shows no future of pay increases.
How can you transfer your skills in one career to another? Most careers have skill sets in common. The best example of this is computer skills. Just about every profession uses a computer for something today. Most businesses have websites also. Most professions need people skilled in leadership, writing, oral presentations, sales, languages, planning, and research. You should sit down and take an inventory of all the skills that you use in your current career and evaluate them against the career you want to go into. It will reveal just how viable your plan is for making a career change.
You may need to get advice from a career counselor. A career counselor has a wealth of information about what is required to enter into a new career. She usually has counseled many who have done exactly the same thing you are contemplating. Plus, she has all of the latest information on industrial and market trends and can tell you what careers are in demand.
What is it that you are passionate about? Oftentimes, people are making career changes because they are burned out in their current ones. For example, those who work in the service industry dealing directly with customers have a tendency to get burned out quickly. For these people, their current career becomes dull and unchallenging. While just about every career has a danger of burnout, when you are passionate about something the likelihood of it happening is reduced. Maybe you have been working for someone else all of your life and want to chase your dream of having your own business. Maybe you always wanted be a writer and publish a book. Identify your passions and it can give you good idea of where to direct your career change.
With today’s competitive job market, practically each resume a job candidate submits is placed in a stack of tens to hundreds of others. There is no way humanly possible for an employer to look at each one in detail. Consider that an employer typically only has a few seconds to scan each resume in the stack and pick only the ones that show potential for results. Therefore, one of your strategies in landing the position you desire is to somehow craft your resume so that it stands out and is above the rest.
Contact information should be easy to find. Remember that the main purpose of a resume is not to get a job but to get an interview. You want to remove any barriers to getting a call back to arrange one. Contact information such as name, work telephone number, home telephone number, and email address should always be printed clearly at the top.
Everyone makes an objective section but you can be a little different. Consider that the majority of job applicants will make a section on their resume right after the contact information that states, “Objective”. Usually, the objective section will have some high-priced words that state something about using your skills to challenge yourself or something like that. The employer will more than likely just skip over this section so you shouldn’t bother with it. Get right into the meat of what you do and how you have done it in the past to achieve quantifiable results.
What do you do and do well? You should as quickly as possible state what it is you do (human resources specialist, accountant, dental assistant, etc.) and then get right into a summary of how you have used your skills to achieve results for other companies in the past.
Quantifiable results always make a resume stand out. Quantifiable means numbers that a person can see. For example, maybe you were an operations director in a previous position and were charged with cutting costs. Don’t only tell your future employer that you had this task. Also show that you were successful at it and give an exact figure by how much you cut costs (e.g., reduced expenses by 30% or reduced yearly expenses by $100,000).
Stick to the one-page recommendation for resumes. Many recommend that a web page be structured so that a user does not have to scroll the page. This is because a person searching for information on the internet only scans and scrolling takes time and causes the viewer to lose interest. It is much the same with resumes. If the employer has to flip the page then he has to refocus on information he is looking for. Too much time elapses (even though its microseconds) and the employer can lose interest.
Some mistakenly subscribe to the notion that a perfectly written resume is the key to getting a job. In other words, an employer will see this person’s resume within the stack of many others and somehow by reading it he will know that he has found a match. These same people seem to think that there is this magical combination of writing just the right words in order to land the job of their dreams. But in reality, resumes are about marketing in order to convince an employer to interview you. They are designed to give just enough information to perk up an employer’s interest so that you will be called in for the interview and the company can find out more about you.
Always keep in mind what an employer is usually looking for. An employer who has a business mindset is thinking about the company’s bottom line. Therefore, that employer is looking for someone who will make the company more profitable. No job candidate impacts a bottom line on the basis of qualifications alone. The desired job candidate will have a proven track record of results with other companies. Your resume should list, in the history section, not just your job responsibilities but specific examples of what you did at that position to better the company you worked for.
The resume should show that you have the potential to fulfill the employer’s need. In order to sell anything, a need must be created within the potential buyer. It is the same with trying to convince an employer to interview you. The employer has a need for an individual to do a job that contributes to the effectiveness and profitability of the company. In order to show that you can meet this need, your resume should be specifically tailored to address each of the requirements posted for a particular job.
Your resume also profiles you before you are seen in the interview. Selling yourself is about not only appealing to an employer’s need but also about making an attractive profile of you. This means your resume should reflect your attention to detail by not having any typographical errors. It should stick to the point and not be filled with details irrelevant to the job. The best resumes are those that are no longer than one page making it easy for an employer to spot what he needs to know. Remember that employers only have a limited amount of time to look at a resume (only a few seconds actually) and you should make all relevant information easy to quickly spot.
