With the economy improving, why does long term unemployment still afflict a large portion of the workforce? The Who (classic rock old guy group, now known as "Who's Left?") sang a song with the lyrics, "I hope I die before I get old." You may not die before you get old, but your career almost certainly will.
Some personal disclosure is in order. I am fifty-five years old. I'm not a young whippersnapper / buck / punk (pick your old guy euphemism) lecturing you on how you just won't change with the times. I am eligible for the super cheap IHOP breakfast special. The waiters know me at Bob Evans. I take enough prescription drugs that I'm considering one of those plastic old people pill caddies while I still have the mental capacity to use it. I've got street cred as an old guy.
To prove my point about unemployment, let's do a virtual experiment together. Get our your checkbook - jeesh I am an old guy. Login into your e-banking software and schedule a payment for $250K. You are going to place a bet. You are going to pretend to be a business owner hiring a new employee for a tech job. You are betting $250K on the person you hire from two potential candidates. Pick the better candidate and get your $250K back plus more. Pick the wrong one and lose your $250K. So you don't have $250K to bet? That makes you just like most business owners. We don't have it to lose either. Welcome to the gamble business owners take every day hiring new employees.
You have two candidates, who appear equally qualified. Neither is a perfect fit for your job, but from their resumes, either seems able to grow into the position. Now you interview them and learn that one candidate is thirty-five years old and the other is fifty-five. On whom shall you bet that $250K that you don't have? Which one seems most adaptable to new skills? You will hire the younger person one hundred times out of one hundred. The economy does the same.
This doesn't seem fair? Fair won't matter to you when $250K of your personal savings is at risk.
I like to think of myself as tech savvy and willing to learn new technologies and methods. Maybe I even really do possess those traits. However, I am one data point in an economy of hundreds of millions of data points. My individual traits matter little in a job search. I carry the statistical baggage of all fifty-five year olds. I am a walking compendium of old guy characteristics that would eliminate me from most jobs without even an interview.
Maybe, we need a federal program to eliminate discrimination against old guys to make the job search game fair. Before chasing the "fair" concept off a cliff, consider the following example from my wife's career.
She works with a man in his fifties, who has tens of years of computer experience. I believe he was a programmer earlier in his career and then went on to teaching computer science in high school. Now he is back as a programmer on a government contract.
He regales his younger colleagues with opinions of how EDLIN is far better than the current crop of of text editors. Remember EDLIN? If you do, you probably carry an AARP card. EDLIN was the original (I think) text editor in MS-DOS - back about 1984. With EDLIN, you edited text files one line at a time. Yes, I'm that old that I used it. It sucks compared to anything you might use in the 21st century. The EDLIN turd was flushed about 1986 in favor of the MS-DOS text editor, imaginatively named EDIT, with which you could edit whole text files at one time. What a technology miracle!
The qualities of EDLIN versus anything else really don't matter. What really matters is the message this guy is broadcasting to his younger colleagues, which is, "I'm old and I can't change." Maybe they mentally insert the word "won't", for "can't."
This guy's contract will surely end as do all government contracts. As the employee of a government contractor, your employment is contract to contract. When one ends, you look for another one. If your company doesn't have a position for you, you move on to another company.
Most people find new jobs by networking with colleagues from prior contracts. What will happen when he goes out job hunting? All of his current colleagues think of him as old and not adaptable. Do you think they'll recommend his hire for new positions? He is one more lead bar, that I get to carry around in my old guy career baggage. He's a datapoint equal to mine. Another brick in the wall we old guys can no longer hurdle in the job market.
Do we really need a federal regulation to get this guy his next job? He's likely not productive in his current job. Shall we curse another employer with his employment? The economy is giving us the answer in the form of the economic reality of long term unemployment. The economy doesn't value and won't pay for experience not relevant to today. A really great EDLIN professional isn't in much demand. Thus, we have persistent long term unemployment for people over fifty.
Sure, this is crappy news for us old people, but you can't solve a problem before defining it. The problem is that our experience from twenty-five years ago has little value and probably is even a negative factor today on a resume. Employees get paid for what they bring to a business now, not what they brought twenty-five years ago. Old people like me may find this hard to believe, but the tech knowledge from twenty-five years ago has next to no value today. Yessiree sonny, we know that a hard drive has platters that spin beneath read / write heads. That doesn't matter in a world moving to solid state storage.
Here are some old guy job search tips. First, don't talk about the good ole mainframe days and how cloud computing is really just a return to the mainframe model. That's largely true, but your resume will go to the shredder anyway. You think you're exuding understanding and perspective. Your younger potential boss pictures giving you CPR in the lobby.
Second, get everything that happened pre 21st century off your resume. No one cares that you were the senior director of DOS application development. What can you do now? Do you have today's important certifications?
Third, talk little (very little) about what you've done and a lot about what you can do for an employer today. The words "extensive experience" should never pass your lips. Those words scream out "past" not "future."
Last, and this is a great interviewing tip for all ages, use my favorite NFL employment metaphor. Tell a potential boss that you are a great left tackle. A left tackle is the protector of the quarterback. The boss sees himself as the quarterback. You are telling a potential boss that you have his back. You aren't looking to sack him. OK, this might not work with female bosses. I don't have a good female boss metaphor. I don't think the term, BFF, works in an employment setting, but maybe my still normal testosterone is getting the best of me here.
Thanks for reading! I promise to be back more often after this most recent and challenging tax season. For real tax and accounting advice, please visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com. Also like the "How to Screw Up Your Small Business" page on Facebook. I solve all the world's business problems there daily.
Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us. Damn - another old guy cliche. Time for my Geritol and a nap.
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