Are you one of these people? Age 50+ with an impressive career track record, but unhappy with your work or suddenly laid off? You start looking for new opportunities by talking to friends and colleagues. They see what you see: a capable, highly-accomplished professional with a lot to contribute to the world. You update your resume and start applying. The response? Crickets. You upskill and do all the things suggested by LinkedIn. The silence after another round of applications is deafening.
Ageism in hiring takes most professionals by surprise. Especially those who, objectively speaking, have been very successful. These professionals have plenty of evidence that they’re good at their work, so how come prospective employers aren’t grabbing them up? No hiring manager would likely admit to it, but some hold the following assumptions about age 50+ job seekers: they’re not tech savvy; they’ll need a lot of hand holding; they won’t like being managed by someone younger; and they’ll probably cost the company more. The added stigma of being laid off can make it harder to find new work, especially as time passes. What can a 50+ job seeker do?
One way to begin is to reflect on past challenges. You have a lot of life experience and have handled many tough situations. Maybe you helped a family member with a knotty health crisis. Maybe you aced a challenging certification exam. Maybe you devised a breakthrough lab technique that made a process more efficient and increased revenue. How did that happen? Did you harness an innate capacity such as curiosity or perseverance or social intelligence? Did you suspend thinking about the problem, which allowed intuition to kick in and a solution emerge spontaneously? Which is, by the way, what Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock did when she hit a dead end. She set the problem aside and was simply tending to her corn plants when the big “aha” came that ultimately led to her winning a Nobel Prize.
Now, consider how you could use your own well-honed capacities, your resiliency “superpowers,” in the current situation. For example, could harnessing the curiosity that sparked an innovative solution in the past lead you to explore something new? Does inner wisdom suggest giving the job search a rest for a bit to allow space for new insights to bubble up? Does the social intelligence that helps you read people well draw you toward certain individuals to connect with?
We live in a culture that celebrates the individual achievements of highly- successful people. Think Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Oprah. Those achievements, however, were never truly achieved solo. It does take a village. The same holds true for finding work at 50+. Marshalling your “village” is key to landing your next job. Here are suggestions:
- Talk to people to let them know you’re looking even if they don’t work in your field. Solicit their suggestions for who else you could talk to.
- Talk to people who are doing interesting things.
- Talk to people who could use your consulting expertise (even pro bono consulting is a legit resume item).
- Talk to a recruiter and/or career coach.
- Leverage your AWIS network.
- Find a group of age 50+ job seekers for mutual support and idea exchange.
If the thought of all that talking makes you uneasy, that’s ok. You can increase your comfort level in small chunks by, for example, making it a goal to talk to at least one new person each day or each week, depending on the degree of urgency you feel. Remember not to put yourself down or be overly apologetic in those conversations. Show up positive. Also, being ready to offer something back to the person you’re engaging with can make the conversation more comfortable and enriching for both of you. Use everything you learn through these conversations to refine your subsequent actions. It helps to think of job searching at age 50+ as a marathon, not a sprint.
Covert age discrimination in hiring is real and impacts the process. Allow that fact to sink in and then remind yourself of this: As a woman in STEM in your 50s, you couldn’t have gotten as far as you’ve gotten without being resilient, smart and tough. That resilience is exactly what will help land the next job.
Patricia Flynn Weitzman, PhD, is a developmental psychologist, NIH-funded researcher, certified career coach, and member of AWIS. Pat loves helping other AWIS members, at all career stages, pivot to something better. She is currently starting a free 4-session group for job seekers, age 50+. Contact her at pat.weitzman@gmail.com.