What I’ve Learned About Job Hunting Over 50

Relationships are everything

A couple of months back, I lost my job. Well, it’s not really lost; I know where it is, I just don’t have it anymore.

It came as no surprise. Three-quarters of the people on my team, including my boss, had been let go several months earlier and business hadn’t improved any since then.

The morning of my own forced departure began with a Slack message from a colleague beginning with “Oh no!”, which for you writers out there is a terrific way to grab the interest of your audience.

“I’ve got an unscheduled call with David (the COO) this morning. It just says “Touch base.”

If you’ve worked in the corporate world, you know that senior people don’t hold spontaneous meetings to hand out employee-of-the-month plaques.

I checked my calendar. “I’ve got one too. It was set up by HR.” Cue ominous music.

Long before nine o’clock, a flurry of Slack messages had circulated among the team as we determined who was staying and who was getting the boot, because of course, that’s what was happening.

My call was uneventful. A suitably remorseful David read the scripted statement required by Legal, and I exuded brave perkiness and mouthed some platitudes about how I’d enjoyed my time there. There’s no use burning bridges, and it was true anyway. Shit happens in business, and if I’d been a gangster instead of a product manager I’d have been in the trunk of a car headed for the Pine Barrens. Count your blessings, I always say.

What’s next was the harder part.

With all due humility, I’m pretty good at a bunch of stuff; in fact that’s the header on both my LinkedIn and Tinder profiles. But I’m also a 60-year-old dude seeking tech-adjacent work, and thanks to recent layoffs in the sector, the streets are awash with fresh-faced digital natives newly fired from Facebook and Google.

If you’re thinking that employers value older workers for their maturity, knowledge and experience, you’re wrong. I learned this in 2017 when I was let go from the bank to which I’d given years of my life and in whose service I’d purchased far too many khaki pants and polo shirts.

As part of the package, they ponied up for a fancy-ass outplacement agency. Here I could fill my calendar with pointless meetings and webinars in an unsettling parody of “real” work, except all the meetings were about job hunting and everyone attending was even sadder than paid employees.

But it wasn’t all busywork and self-pity; some of the sessions were useful, including one about how to effectively job hunt when you’re over fifty. The instructor started off with a bold statement.

“Age discrimination is against the law, but as we all know it happens everywhere.”

Yup.

In that particular career interregnum, I applied for some seventy jobs, got eleven interviews, and heard things like “you’re overqualified”, “you wouldn’t fit in with the corporate culture”, and my personal favourite from a major consulting firm, “people who have knowledge don’t do well here.” If you’re saying that none of these are prima facie evidence of ageism, well, you weren’t there.

And keep in mind, this is what they were actually telling me; imagine what they weren’t tactless enough to say out loud.

It’s puzzling because studies have shown that older workers outpace their younger counterparts by almost every metric.

The seminar noted a number of false stereotypes which feed into age-related bias.

• That we aren’t up to speed on technology (“Hey who do I need to fax around there to help insert my DOS boot-up floppy?”).
• That we don’t get along with younger workers, or “whippersnappers” as we call them.
• Related to the above, the idea that we’re overconfident in our abilities (“I spearheaded the WorkPerfect install for my firm back in ’89, I think I can manage the build of an armed sentient chatbot!”)
• That we’re grouchy, mean-spirited and uncooperative. Ok, that’s fair but I was like that at 25.

We were advised to present ourselves, in person and online, in ways that would combat these biases — by continuous self-education, by loading CVs with words like “effective” and “dynamic,” and by being congenial in a non-demented kind of way. Not recommended was the use of hair dye, botox, and cosmetic surgery until you look like a Micky Rourke Halloween mask.

The bad news: all that advice was largely useless, both in 2017 and so far this year.

Nevertheless, this time around I still spent the first few weeks post-employment doing everything recommended by the life-coaching keeners on LinkedIn.

• I subscribed to email alerts for openings in my field.
• I slashed my resume down to the last decade-and-a-half of employment and coyly excised graduation dates from the 20th century.
• I fired copies of the newly-eviscerated CV into the ether to be rejected by algorithms which didn’t like my dated buzzwords.
• I badgered my “personal network” into awkward conversations about whether they were hiring or knew anyone who was.

In a digital world, job hunting isn’t the effort it used to be. It takes about fifteen minutes a day to apply for positions online, then wait for the email from the reject-bot lauding your storied career and regretting they can’t move forward with your application. The odds aren’t great when you’re over 50— it’s like an online casino except it’s not fun and nobody wins.

Still, cold-applying is necessary because you never know, and you have to do something besides watch The Office and cry. But the real takeaway is this:

Relationships are everything.

You shouldn’t wring every friendship into a dehydrated husk— “No, I don’t want to go for another damn coffee!” —but the experts are right that networking is where you’ll get the most bang for your buck.

Assuming you’re not incompetent, people who know you and your work are far more likely to give you a chance than strangers scanning a hundred CVs a day.

While I eventually landed something in 2018, it was through the good graces of a corporate VP whom I’d met once for beers to talk about a shared love of fiction writing. He recommended me for an interview that wouldn’t have happened otherwise, and after a few more meetings I got the job.

At various times since I’ve been approached by former colleagues about working with them. I wasn’t looking then so I just blushed and shuffled my feet, but it’s useful and flattering to know folks have a good opinion of you. And it’s key to maintain those relationships when you’re not looking for work, so you don’t seem too desperate or opportunistic when you are.

Reputation is the critical currency of the workplace.

The market for my skills is less robust right now, due to the aforementioned glut of technologists, and boardroom enthusiasm for replacing humans with AI. Hell, it’s possible I’ve retired already and don’t know it, although my bank account argues otherwise.

That’s ok. I know what I’m good at, and what comes will come. The warm weather’s here, and some time enjoying the sun and catching up on my reading looks pretty good too.

See y’all on Zoom.