Can you find a new career over 50?
Finding a job when your older can be real challenge to a lot of people. There isn’t supposed to be age discrimination when it comes to hiring, however, many will tell you that it still exists and not just in North America.
I recently received an email from a man in Australia telling me that he had found himself in a situation where he needed to find new job. He had sent out numerous job applications over several months. This lead to a total of 4 interviews for positions that he was well qualified for, however he didn’t get hired. He said that there’s not supposed to be any age discrimination here in Australia but I really think there is. Convinced that searching for a job at his age was a lost cause and a waste of time, he decided to create his own job by starting his own small business. He couldn’t rely on someone else for his future, he had to do something about it himself.
You may be able to relate to this and the comments below…
- At my age, who is going to hire me? I have applied for over a thousand jobs in the last two years and once they review my employment history, it stops there.
- Now at age 55 I am having a hard time getting an interview.
- I have well over 25 years experience and probably forgot more than most college graduates will ever know. I have a hard time even getting an interview. I find my age (58) to be the biggest problem.
How old is too old when it comes to getting hired? You might be surprised at what some employers consider old. In some cases, job seekers are in their fifties or sixties. In other cases, they are even younger.
Hopefully things will change as the type of employers change. We are hearing about some using less traditional hiring policies 
and being more personal and realistic when look for a suitable employee.
For example a lot of newer company owners and leaders do not have a university degree themselves, so are not requiring it from those they are looking to hire. It’s more important and practical a person will fit into the company, what their capabilities are, their work ethic also their potential than what’s written on a certificates.
This isn’t a new way of doing things as much as it is how things used to be done, that is before higher and higher education became such huge business and profit building industry. Now unimaginable numbers of people have degrees and certificates leaving them with huge debt. And what’s worse is so often these qualifications do not transfer over to the type of employment they then seek.
Make sure you’re job ready
Employers will continue to get much better at picking successful candidates by largely ignoring schooling (companies like Google is leading the way), and then they’ll start to ignore other largely meaningless issues that are problems only for less progressive people. Which means you need to start adjusting whether you worry about this stuff, too.
There’s a terrible cycle going on in the recruiting arena: Candidates can send out hundreds of resumes because it’s so easy. Companies can end up receiving hundreds of resumes for each job, which is unruly to manage, so they often use applicant tracking systems that use computers, instead of people, to sort resumes. Candidates realize that they are unlikely to get a human reading their resume, so they perceive their odds of landing a job as poor and send out extreme numbers of resumes. And they automate the sending process.
The New York Times has painted this picture of the candidates and companies automating the sending and reading of resumes as a pantomime of a real screening process, except the stakes are real for everyone involved. This means that companies are looking for ways to sidestep hiring by way of work history. Silicon Valley companies are enthralled with the idea of hiring from employee referrals because they are cheaper and better. Startups like HireArt help employers sidestep resumes by focusing on what a candidate is able to do rather than what the candidate has been hired to do in the past.
ᔥFive things you can stop worrying about when you worry about getting a job
Although this may not be of help to you with your job search right now but things could change. Maybe the hiring process may be what it should be once again…face to face, person to person and not an automated impersonal process.
Summary…If you are having a problem finding a new job start thinking of other options that may be open to you. For some the search is due to financial need and for others it’s a purpose, something to keep them occupied and give them an interest.
Many people are not retiring at the suggested retirement age, they are working full or part time well into their 70’s. Often it’s for financial survival when they would just love to stay home and be able to put their feet up.
