There is life beyond fifty
How does it feel to be a candidate again and sitting on the other side of the interview table? Hundreds of articles say that it is very hard to change and find good jobs for people at the age of 50+. Companies do not like to hire employees at this age.
I see this a little more differently. Why? In the last three years, I happened to have much more senior jobseekers (50 people altogether) aged over fifty in my outplacement and career coaching programs than before. I had senior participant in-front of me frustrated, often in tears, and hearing that ‘my life is over, no-one will hire me – I’m too old’.
The good news is that except two of my clients everyone has already successfully landed a job and they are happy with their new positions.
This drove me to grab my pen, and give some brief insights to you, my dear reader into what made these people successful in the ever challenging job-hunting game.
One of my costumers, let’s name them the „BIG COMPANY”, has decided to undertake heavy downsizing due to their global restructuring project. More than 50 senior employees have been eliminated from technician and administration to executive levels.
So I have started to work with leavers from the age of 35 up till 60. During this project I came to some interesting conclusions, which I would like to share with you. Nearly half of the senior jobseekers (age 53-60), so 23 of 50 candidates, has landed at a new place within 5 months.
The younger group (aged between 35-45) needed 4 months, so only slightly less than the more senior jobseekers. With my colleagues we have done some analyses why there was no significant difference between the two groups.
Conclusion 1:
The personality, the motivation, energy, setting professional objectives, and being steady and persistent in the job search are what really differentiate people in their success rather than the age.
Conclusion 2:
The professional background and catching up with the latest technologies, knowledge and competencies play a significant role in the success of the jobs-search.
Our perception is that today soft skills are having significantly higher importance in personal success as well as in leadership results. After gaining deeper insight about the successfully landed clients’ job search project, we found that those who had clear and realistic professional objectives, had a well-developed communication strategy, which allowed them to better highlight their motivation and potential compared to other jobseekers during interviews”.
Honestly telling, I had some perspiring moments to persuade them why is professional networking, both online-offline, is important. Beside two of my clients the bell was ringing for everyone. Being active on social sites improves chances in Hungary as well as over the border. I guess my dear readers you know which ones I’m thinking of ;)
Many of the senior and junior jobs-seekers ignore the professional networking, not mentioning the online version, missing several opportunities during their search or has poor online visibility.
Our senior job-seeker clients managed to have good quality online visibility and intensive networking therefore could increase the potential open positions fits to their goals by 50%.
Conclusion 3:
To my great surprise my clients aged 60 (three of the participants) found jobs sooner than their younger counterparts.
What have they done differently? Besides having all the important weapons mentioned above, they proved to be very productive and more persistent in pursuing their realistic goals, meaning 5-6 hours daily.
Would you like to know more about how to spend those 5-6 hours the best way? I will be back a couple of weeks later to give some tips how to make your job search productive.
So dear senior jobseekers, there is life beyond 50.
