ST. LOUIS — Unemployment is lower than it has been since 1969. “Now hiring” signs are everywhere. But even so, jobs can be hard to find if you’re over 50 years old.
Or at least that’s the perception. Area career counselors say the jobs are out there for people who are willing to change. The change may have to be in their expectations, their skill sets or maybe just the way they look for employment.
“Fifty is not that old in today’s workforce,” said Karen Chontofalsky, a certified job and career transition coach and owner of Nerdy Girl Career Coach in St. Louis.
In fact, for people in their early 50s and late 40s, the future looks dazzlingly bright. Between now and the year 2030, about 10,000 people will reach retirement age every day, Chontofalsky said. That means the higher positions in leadership and management are or soon will be ready to be filled.
But what about people who are a little closer to retirement age but are not ready to retire?
“Age discrimination or age bias is a real thing, it does exist, there are challenges out there,” said Lauren Herring, founder and chairwoman of Impact Group, a career counseling firm in St. Louis.
So what can you do to overcome it?
“The biggest opportunity for over-50 (job) seekers is knowing your own story and knowing how to clearly articulate your value to the marketplace or to any employer,” said Herring, who is also the author of the self-published “Take Control of Your Job Search: 10 Emotions You Must Master to Land the Job.”
“To me, the most important aspect of a successful job search is to start with a really good sense of personal branding. It’s more than just a good resumé. It’s more about how can you paint a picture in a future employer’s mind, or someone in your network’s mind, about how you can help out their business,” she said.
Job-seekers with the most success know how to tell their story and can explain to potential employers what value they can bring to that company, Herring said.
It can be scary to apply for a job in the later stages of one’s career, said Jen Whitten, a longtime career coach who now manages a team of job recruiters for Intel. Making any kind of change that big can be daunting.
“When you get to a certain age, your threshold for what you want for a job is higher,” Whitten said.
“People are less likely to accept something that is going to make them unhappy.”
While entry-level positions are abundant, some people who have been working for a few decades are not satisfied with them, she said. They are not only interested in making money, they also want a job that provides them gratification and contentment.
“The older you get, the more experience that you have, the more roles that you play in your life, the better you understand what you want out of your work,” Whitten said.
She advises older job seekers to look back on the past five or 10 years and determine what they have done that they have enjoyed. Then they should look for a job that allows them to do that.
That’s the easy part. The hard part is convincing a company that offers those opportunities to hire them.
It’s not as difficult as some might think. Job-seekers who worry that companies won’t hire them because they are only a few years away from retirement need to know that societal attitudes have changed. People do not stay in jobs as long as they used to, Herring said.
“Nowadays, a company is thrilled if you’ll stay five or 10 years. Many of the current generation are saying two to three (years). If you say five or maybe 10, that is something many companies would be very satisfied with,” she said.
It may be helpful for the applicant to use his or her age to an advantage by pitching himself or herself as a potential mentor to younger employees, Chontofalsky said.
“They should present themselves as a subject-matter expert or a thought leader in their field,” she said.
But it’s possible that the field has changed, that companies have moved in a different direction.
“You can’t be complacent thinking that just because you have years of experience that that translates to aligning with the skill sets that are required in today’s market,” Herring said. “It’s not enough to depend on the skill set that worked for you 10 years ago.”
Additional education might be called for, even if it is just a short course or two, she said. What is vital is for job-seekers to prepare for what companies are doing now, not what they did earlier in his or her career.
Chontofalsky agreed. “Make sure you stay current in your field. Make sure you talk about current technology on your resumé and in your interviews. Make your resumé forward-thinking,” she said.
Looking back at the past only emphasizes the job-seeker’s age. An applicant’s resumé should only show the last 10 or so years of experience. Anything beyond that is irrelevant, she said.
The jobs are out there, the career coaches concurred. Applicants just have to be realistic.
“There might be situations where you might need to adjust your salary expectations based on what the current market may bear for your particular skill set,” Herring said. “But base it on research, not just what you think.”
