Many prospects call me and lament their status in todays job market. I have just been laid-off for the second time and I am in my 50s. I cannot afford to retire for another 10-15 years because my youngest son has not entered college yet. I do not know where to turn; do you think that you can help me? is a typical call of resignation I receive more often than I care to count. Although I am based in the Silicon Valley my practice is global; I have clients in 23 countries in many areas of business and industry. So, these calls are almost geo-agnostic.
What drives this mindset is some myth around job losses that occurred during the past several decades, mostly from the manufacturing sector. Conventional wisdom holds that the new economy is an inhospitable place for workers in their 50s or 60s, with full or part-time gigs flipping burgers or as Wal-Mart greeters or worse, are the only avenues available to them. In a recent Wall-Street Journal article Ann Tergesen reports its never been better to be an older worker looking for a job. Why? The numbers show that the nightmare scenario simply isnt true. The 55-and-older demographic is actually the only age group with a rising labor-force participation rate, Ann reports. Not only that, but more than 60 percent of workers age 65 or older have full-time positions, up from 44 percent in 1995. These older workers are increasingly working in well-paid, highly skilled jobs in the professional services industry. They are helped by the overall shift from a manufacturing to a service economy, which has created more jobs in which cognitive skills matter more than physical ability.
The problem facing many white-collar workers is not that they are too old to re-enter the job market, but it is that they have mentally resigned to their fate. Study after study shows little to no relationship between age and productivity. One recent look at workers at a large German insurance firm found that productivity actually rises with age when it comes to more demanding tasks that require deep expertise. Although it is true that young, fresh graduates probably find it easier to get many software programming and coding jobs than do their counterparts in their 50s, these whippersnappers often do not have the maturity and the deep social expertise required in dealing with human-interaction issues that confront those engaged in professional services, such as dealing with customers, irate users, and frustrated suppliers who are not getting paid on time. It is in these areas where technology and social skills intersect that the older workers find their sweet spot.
The other problem with the older generation, too, is that, often, their inertia betrays them in what is required to be agile in todays job market. I know many clients who come to me after they are already laid-off, despite clear signals for many years that their job was in jeopardy and knowing that their company was slowly heading towards life-support. When they face lay-off at a moribund company they suddenly awaken to their new reality and start panicking about what is on their rsum, building their network, and updating their LinkedIn Profile. At this stage it is almost too late to resuscitate a career.
So, what are some of the rules to observe, especially when you enter that dreaded 50s age group, in your career to keep yourself employable beyond your career event horizon? Here are some worth heeding:
- Keep track of your career momentum in your current role. If you have not done anything new or different during the past two Annual Review Cycles (APRs) then you are stagnating in your job and you are losing your escape velocity to get out and get yourself another job. Seek a new project, assignment, or ask for a transfer. If your company does not practice APR cycles, create your own for yourself.
- Keep your rsum and LinkedIn Profile current and marketable. Merely adding bullets on your rsum without doing anything new is not going to make you more marketable, even when you have a job. Always look for something new to say on your rsum that enhances your appeal to a hiring manager.
- Learn how to write a story-telling rsum. Most rsum bullets read like the job description merely written in the past tense. Learn how to tell an Aha! story of accomplishments to amp-up your marketability. For example: Instead of saying, managed two projects and released both on time as required, say, Upon taking charge realized that both projects were off track and were going to miss the critical 2016 CES (Consumer Electronics Show) deadline. With only five months remaining, mobilized the team with a new charter, got additional funds allocated, and hired experts to fill the skill gaps, beating deadlines on both releases. The new products are now companys largest revenue generators.
- Become aware of external conditions that drive the welfare of your company. Learn about your competition, your companys stock price and its trend, its strategic plan, 10-K and 10-Q filings with SEC, etc. This way you will not be blindsided by sudden news of lay-offs or cutbacks. You may have stellar APRs, but if your company or BU tanks nobody can keep you!
- Constantly expand your network, not just in your own technical and professional areas of work, but also in adjacent areas. Recently, a client of mine working at a high-tech company got weary of his bosss promises of promotion. When he missed it three years in a row he started expanding his network with biotech companies and started taking courses in that area of specialty. Now he works at a promising biotech company, as his old company is going through painful lay-offs.
- Merely updating your skills by taking MOOC courses or what is available on line does not always make you more marketable. You must match that with hands-on experience, even creating your own projects to make it happen. So, instead of merely stating Certified from Coursera on Machine Learning and AI, if you can state, After getting Coursera certification designed and installed my personal AI system at my home that does facial recognition and automatic entry to secure zones within key areas of my house in a fail-safe way, is a much better statement of your skills than any other statement of your getting that certification. In todays ethos taking courses or even getting certified in them fails to impress many hiring managers.
- Start blogging regularly about a topic in which you want to be known as an expert. Writing blogs takes more discipline than it does talent. With so much material available on line it is not difficult to do some research (as I did with the Wall-Street Journal for this blog) and create your point of view to develop an interesting blog on a regular basis. Regular blog postings create their own followers and you get visibility in the circles that matter in your career if you do it right.
- If you feel stultified in your current role by repeatedly doing the same job day-in-and-day-out, identify some opportunity that is hampering customer experience in your company and volunteer to do something about it. Make your boss shine and you will get credit for doing something off the beaten path on your rsum.
- Keep yourself marketable by pursuing stretch roles and seeing how you get invited to interviews and how you are able to navigate through them. This experience will build your confidence and will keep you market-ready at all times.
- If you are already out and struggling to find a job when you are in your 50s, know when things are not working and find a new path to pursue your next gig!
Life is not over when you are in your 50s and get laid-off. There often are ample warning signs before actual lay-off comes your way. Use that time wisely to keep yourself in the game! If you are already out and looking, take a fresh look at your overall marketing message and strategy and get some expert advice on what needs changing.
Good luck!
| About Author | |
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Dilip has distinguished himself as LinkedIn’s #1 career coach from among a global pool of over 1,000 peers ever since LinkedIn started ranking them professionally (LinkedIn selected 23 categories of professionals for this ranking and published this ranking from 2006 until 2012). Having worked with over 6,000 clients from all walks of professions and having worked with nearly the entire spectrum of age groups—from high-school graduates about to enter college to those in their 70s, not knowing what to do with their retirement—Dilip has developed a unique approach to bringing meaning to their professional and personal lives. Dilip’s professional success lies in his ability to codify what he has learned in his own varied life (he has changed careers four times and is currently in his fifth) and from those of his clients, and to apply the essence of that learning to each coaching situation. After getting his B.Tech. (Honors) from IIT-Bombay and Master’s in electrical engineering(MSEE) from Stanford University, Dilip worked at various organizations, starting as an individual contributor and then progressing to head an engineering organization of a division of a high-tech company, with $2B in sales, in California’s Silicon Valley. His current interest in coaching resulted from his career experiences spanning nearly four decades, at four very diverse organizations–and industries, including a major conglomerate in India, and from what it takes to re-invent oneself time and again, especially after a lay-off and with constraints that are beyond your control. During the 45-plus years since his graduation, Dilip has reinvented himself time and again to explore new career horizons. When he left the corporate world, as head of engineering of a technology company, he started his own technology consulting business, helping high-tech and biotech companies streamline their product development processes. Dilip’s third career was working as a marketing consultant helping Fortune-500 companies dramatically improve their sales, based on a novel concept. It is during this work that Dilip realized that the greatest challenge most corporations face is available leadership resources and effectiveness; too many followers looking up to rudderless leadership. Dilip then decided to work with corporations helping them understand the leadership process and how to increase leadership effectiveness at every level. Soon afterwards, when the job-market tanked in Silicon Valley in 2001, Dilip changed his career track yet again and decided to work initially with many high-tech refugees, who wanted expert guidance in their reinvention and reemployment. Quickly, Dilip expanded his practice to help professionals from all walks of life. Now in his fifth career, Dilip works with professionals in the Silicon Valley and around the world helping with reinvention to get their dream jobs or vocations. As a career counselor and life coach, Dilip’s focus has been career transitions for professionals at all levels and engaging them in a purposeful pursuit. Working with them, he has developed many groundbreaking approaches to career transition that are now published in five books, his weekly blogs, and hundreds of articles. He has worked with those looking for a change in their careers–re-invention–and jobs at levels ranging from CEOs to hospital orderlies. He has developed numerous seminars and workshops to complement his individual coaching for helping others with making career and life transitions. Dilip’s central theme in his practice is to help clients discover their latent genius and then build a value proposition around it to articulate a strong verbal brand. Throughout this journey, Dilip has come up with many groundbreaking practices such as an Inductive Résumé and the Genius Extraction Tool. Dilip owns two patents, has two publications in the Harvard Business Review and has led a CEO roundtable for Chief Executive on Customer Loyalty. Both Amazon and B&N list numerous reviews on his five books. Dilip is also listed in Who’s Who, has appeared several times on CNN Headline News/Comcast Local Edition, as well as in the San Francisco Chronicle in its career columns. Dilip is a contributing writer to several publications. Dilip is a sought-after speaker at public and private forums on jobs, careers, leadership challenges, and how to be an effective leader. |
Website: https://dilipsaraf.com/?p=2877
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