The Plight of the Older Worker

Over the past 24 hours I have worked with two women who are in their late 50s and who work at a couple of well known corporations. Both women asked for some job search advice because both may be on their way out.

One woman works as an executive assistant for four company directors.  She is bright and has great interpersonal and organizational skills. The other woman works as a technical manager within a group of 15 project managers.  She has excellent technical skills including project management, negotiation and she too has excellent interpersonal skills. 

Both women have managers who need to learn how to be better leaders and managers.

Before I go on, put yourself in either one of their shoes.  Imagine being in your late 50s and knowing that you could lose your job at any point.  Imagine thinking that not long ago you were thinking about retiring with the company and now you think that you may have to work way into your late 60s.  Imagine the hours and blood, sweat and tears that you have given to a company only to be coldly dismissed. Imagine worrying about benefits, mortgages, college payments, and savings plans while in the latter part of your career.  Imagine the panic and worry and stress. Imagine finally earning a six week vacation and then having to go back to two weeks.

Imagine walking on eggshells everyday as you wonder,"Will today will be it?”

Both women are planning to reimagine themselves.  They both have good, solid transferable skills. They are aware that they need to continue to be technically astute and stay on top of the technology in their respective fields. They will have current, focused resumes and LinkedIn profiles. They don’t want to but know that if the time comes, they will have to network and start all over. Neither of them want to think about the possibility of working a couple of jobs just to make ends meet. Both of these women are staying ahead of the eight ball because neither of them want to become part of the current and very frustrating job search statistics.

How many others are just like them?