On How To Become an “Audacious Ager”

I have a new favorite term for what I’m striving to be – an “audacious ager”.

Aging is a pretty hot topic because so many of us are experiencing the unstoppable nature of it.  It seems we’re on a constant search for things to describe our denial of the eventuality.  Things like “purposeful aging”, “successful aging”, “graceful aging”. Creativity abounds amongst us later-lifers in our attempt to put monikers on what we are experiencing.

Margaret Manning at Sixtyandme.com polled 43,000 women and asked them to give her one adverb that described how they were aging. You can see 40 of them in this article.

No grace in aging

Pretty creative and surprising list.  Note that no one chose “graceful.” No surprise.  There’s not much that’s graceful about it.

Number 40 – “outrageously” – came closest to my new favorite.

My new favorite came from a rather unusual source – the National Business Group on Health’s (NBGH) Business Health Agenda (BHA) conference.  NBGHBHA for short – really?  This conference apparently focused on employer-sponsored health care plans and the challenges and changes companies are facing in terms of plan design, health data, demographics and much more.

One of the topics presented had to do with the boomer’s role in the future.  It emphasized that employers are facing a major paradigm shift for which they are unprepared. An employer poll revealed that, of five predictions for the future, “audacious aging” was the paradigm shift that employers were least prepared to deal with.

Here’s a graph showing the results.

 

It’s a revealing reflection of the fact that retirement, as we’ve known it, is going away.

It takes guts to age naturally

There are two reasons that “audacious aging” resonated with me.  First, I’m a contrarian by nature and being audacious in a number of areas of my life is becoming more common and more comfortable as I’ve outgrown my need to compare and seek the approval of others. It just takes too much frigging mental energy to do either. NOTE:  You’ll get there if you aren’t already.

Secondly, I’m learning that to age normally and naturally, we have to be audaciously aggressive against a lot of forces that are pulling us up short of our full life potential.

So maybe you’d like to join me and the growing ranks of audacious agers.  If interested, here are some fundamental steps to becoming one:

  1. You shun traditional retirement. You give the finger to a culture that insinuates that you have a “use by” stamp on the back of your neck.  You tell anybody who will listen that you “ain’t done yet” and to “stop asking me when I’m going to retire.”  Remind them that you know the universe will take your parts back someday but that, right now, they are still working just fine, thank you, especially your ability to think and create and contribute.
  2. You adopt an attitude with gratitude and altitude. You’ve sworn to not become a geezer/hag, that grumpy, immobile, smelly old fart/bag that you swore you would never become. You refuse to relinquish your still-supple mental bandwidth to the things that aren’t right in the world and in our lives.  You turn off Constant Negative News network (CNN), cancel the local paper and forget the local news.  You journal five things every day that you are grateful for.  You acknowledge that “better has no finish line” and you get better at something every day.  You block your brain’s innate tendency to time travel to your past (regrets) and to the future (fear) and commit to making your future bigger than your past.  You deeply reflect, rediscover, resurrect, and redeploy your essential self in a way that moves humanity forward positively. You put together a 25-year plan regardless of your age.  And you find the time – now – to write your 100th-birthday speech.
  3. Be one of the 3% in your age group that is at 24-hour Fitness (or equivalent) 6 days a week. And, no, none of this one-mph on a treadmill with zero incline for 15 minutes. Nope, you throw around some free weights at least three days a week with the tattooed, tank-topped and tiny-testicled 30-somethings as they tune up their mirror muscles (sorry ladies, couldn’t resist that statement).  And you add 45 minutes of serious interval cardio work six days a week. You accept that those 30-something mirror muscles (male or female) aren’t in your future and that isn’t what it’s all about.  It’s about being able to walk, talk, think, and be a hero and a source of cognitive and meaningful wisdom for your great-grandkids.
  4. Help eradicate fast-food.  OK, that’s not going to happen but you can do your part to help slow the damage it does.  Do the math on this: (1) 2015 was the first year that Americans spent more eating-out than they did cooking at home.(2) CDC has estimated that 40% of the U.S. population is overweight.  Hmmmm!  Any correlation?  Calorie-levels of restaurant food is 20-30% higher than food prepared at home – and portions are ridiculous.  Bring it home and be a “flexitarian” – plant-and fruit-heavy diet with occasional “meat as a treat.”
  5. Piss off your Primary Care Physician. Well, not really.  You need him/her along the way.  But you realize she/he is encumbered by a mindset focused on cure, not prevention, and under a corporate or government-driven mandate to spend less time with you than ever. You go into your annual or semi-annual visit (hopefully, no more than that) with the knowledge that 95% of physicians have had zero training in geriatrics and that they are anything but nutritionists. You reach an agreement on the front-end that you will rescind your co-pay if he/she once says “what do you expect at your age?”  You go into your meeting equipped with questions that will put them on notice that this is not your average bear when it comes to understanding how the body works.   Questions like: “why didn’t my blood test include a BUN (blood urea nitrogen), creatinine and homocysteine test?”  (See P.12 of my free e-book for more on knowing your biomarkers).  Trust me there’s a good chance that your doc is not going to be fully accepting of you taking full charge of your health and won’t appreciate being challenged (check out this article).  But it’s not too late for them to adapt. Look, healthcare is going the wrong direction for us audacious agers and the docs know it.  Self-efficacy/self-care is one of our new mantras and we are committed to enlisting our docs as partners in that mantra rather than abdicating our health to them.
  6. Change your circle and hang with the youngers. Jim Rohn, renowned American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker is often credited with saying that we rise to the level of the five people we spend the most time with.   When you take a look at the roles that mentors have played in the lives of highly successful people, it’s a hard point to argue.  As an audacious ager, you make sure the five closest to you are moving on and taking it to their lives rather than life taking it to them.  No downers, doubters, or whiners. You’re on the lookout for someone who will push you, challenge you, encourage you and accept that you are committed to coloring outside the lines.  You work to develop a “tribe” that includes people 20, 30, 40 years younger than you and draw on their energy and creativity and listen to their ideas and reciprocate by helping them with your wisdom.

Be prepared for the ridicule

Let’s face it, the reality is that most people won’t buy into this concept and you are setting yourself up for some not-so-subtle jabs, especially from your inner circle (ref #5 above). They are likely locked into belief systems that say that sedentary retirement is an entitled gift, senescence is automatic, and that aging is more about fate and genetics than choices. But as an audacious ager, you know it’s bull****.  You become the model of what is possible and, as Gandhi taught, “be the change you want to see in other people.”  Some will want what you’ve got.  That’s the biggest payoff of being an audacious ager – effecting change through example.

Maybe you are already an audacious ager.  I’d love to hear your story.  Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com and set up a time to talk.  I’m on the lookout for audacious agers with big stories to feature on my podcast platform which I will be introducing in early 2018.

While you are at it, click on this link, scroll down and take advantage of my new free ebook, “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose”.

Wishing you the best

No blog this week.  Just my best wishes to you for the holiday season and for 2018 to be the most exciting year of your life! 

Thanks for being a subscriber!

www.makeagingwork.com

Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!

 

George Burns was guilty of some really fabulous quotes, most of them quite funny, some deadly serious.  Many had to do with his advancing age (he died in 1996 at age 100).  Here are a few:

  • Retire? I’m going to stay in show business until I’m the only one left.
  • People are always asking me when I’m going to retire. Why should I?  I’ve got it two ways – I’m still making movies, and I’m a senior citizen, so I can see myself at half price.
  • How can I die? I’m booked.
  • As long as you’re working, you stay young.

Michelangelo died at 89 – at a time when the average lifespan was less than half that – still working as the architect for the replacement of a 4th-century Constantinian basilica that became St. Peter’s Basilica, called by some as the “greatest creation of the Renaissance.”  He also worked on a sculpture (the Rondani Peita) up until six days before his death.

Steve Jobs was widely reported to have died yelling about something not being exactly perfectly correct – and is reported to have been working until the last day.

 

Einstein never stopped.

 

Revisiting vocāre

Today we treat folks who choose to “work themselves until death” as some sort of wunderkinds or anomalies when a mere 150 years ago that was the norm.  That was before the Industrial Revolution changed the landscape of work and injected the concept of the artificial finish line called retirement.

In the process, it seems we’ve redefined, convoluted and distorted an important word.  That word is vocation.

Vocation is rooted in the Latin vocāre, meaning to call, which suggests listening for something that calls out to you, a voice telling me what I am.

Today, we relate vocation to specialized training into a “career track” or a “job” via a vocational or trade school versus a “profession” calling for a bachelor degree or higher.  Not likely a pursuit of a “higher calling” but more a decision based on need and what may be trending in the “job” market.

Grammarist.com defines a vocation as “a calling, an occupation, or a large undertaking for which one is especially suited. It can be roughly synonymous with career or profession, though vocation connotes a seriousness or a commitment that these words don’t always bear.” 

Today, we tend to mix vocation in with two other words – career and job – when their distinctions are quite different.

Career

A quick look at the definition of “career” shows a big difference. Career has its origin in the Latin word “carrus” or “wheeled vehicle” denoting a “cart” and then later from the French word “carrier” denoting a road or racecourse. The dictionary defines career, as a verb, to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction.”

Careers for many are just that – a mad rush for a long time that ends up going nowhere and with that realization coming late in life.  Or maybe it’s going somewhere in terms of provision and accumulation, but not in a way that fits the definition of a “calling”.

The checkered flag at the end of this racecourse is that coveted pot of gold toward the end of life’s rainbow called retirement, a finish line that may have blocked moving toward a true calling.

Job

A job is the most immediate and relatable term as it’s what we do every day to produce income, the fuel that keeps us on the aforementioned racecourse. The dictionary defines job as “a lump, chore or duty.”  For some, that lump is “coal”.  Consider that the average job is around 3.2 years and that during the average lifespan, most of us will have had a dozen or more “jobs”.

 

Does sound like a racetrack doesn’t it?  Perhaps that old word denoting a calling is what is missing.  As we zip past mid-life into our second half, it would be a good time to re-evaluate, resurrect and reapply vocation in its true, traditional meaning.

 

But I’m passing 50 –  too late to find my “calling”?

It’s a pretty common question amongst mid-lifer’s.  There’s that uneasy stirring going on deep in the gut. More days behind than ahead; lost enthusiasm for the chosen “racetrack”; a growing sense of aimlessness and emptiness; accumulation no longer important; the “who am I and why am I here”, “is it too late to make a difference?” questions that won’t go away.

It’s a critical fork-in-the-road time of life.  One road gives in to the “social self” that has indoctrinated us into an artificial age-related culture and encourages us to remain a part of the crowd and stay-the-course to a landing called retirement.

The other road acknowledges a long-suppressed “essential self” that is insensitive to age and puts us on a trail that can enable a new takeoff rather than a landing.  Only this time the takeoff is launched through a re-discovery and resurrection of our deepest dreams and desires but applied using our deepest talents and acquired skills.

Warning!

The second fork may mean you will, willingly, work yourself to (until) death.

Second warning!

You may:

Evidence has been in for a long time.  Work is necessary for longer, healthier living.

Polls of centenarians have revealed that an astonishingly high percentage of them continue to work and that they rank working alongside being able to walk as one of the keys to their longevity.

The universe doesn’t want your parts back yet

I’m a huge fan and follower of Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, the most successful entrepreneurial coaching program on the planet.  In a recent podcast from a series entitled “Exponential Wisdom” that he does with Peter Diamandis, Dan stated that he feels he has “disenfranchised” most of the 18,000 entrepreneurs he has trained from the idea of retirement.  He and Diamandis have tagged retirement as the “ultimate casualty.”

Together, they emphatically emphasize that “stopping and retirement means you are ready to retire your bits back to the universe.”

Not sure about you, I’m in no hurry.

Newsflash!  Your Recruiter Practices Ageism!

 

By Oxford Dictionary definition, “ageist” as a noun is “a person with ageist views.”  And “ageism” as a noun is “prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a person’s age.”  The recruiter(s) you are working within your job search are practicing ageism.

There, I’ve said it.  I’ve been a recruiter for 16 ½ years and I’ve been practicing ageism the entire time.  Not because I’m prejudiced toward older people – good grief, I’m 75, a job- search and career-reinvention coach for over-50 folks and a passionate advocate for living a longer and healthier “second half” of life.

Ageism is built into the recruiting profession.

Just so you know, I’m not out to condemn this respectable profession.  I’m one of ’em.  I’ve befriended, partnered with, admired and enjoyed knowing many recruiters.  It’s a great, but tough, profession.  Recruiters are a special breed.  They have to be to survive.

Look, they are working with creation’s most imperfect and unpredictable product on both ends of the recruiting equation – people.  It takes grit, staying power, patience and extraordinary people, communications, and organization skills to succeed in this business.  For the most part, recruiters are fiercely independent and hear a different set of drums– one of the reasons I like being around them.

None that I know are prejudicial ageists.

But we all discriminate every day.  Someone gets picked, someone gets rejected.  It’s inherent in the hiring process.  But that discrimination may involve ageist-based decisions. It’s not a heart –based discriminatory decision.  It’s a business-based decision.

So, why do I need to know this?

I’m writing this for the over-50 job seeker or encore-career candidate.  That’s who needs to know and understand why the ageism element is embedded in the recruiting business.

First, please understand that, as a career coach, I advise against any job search strategy having more than 15-20% of the search effort dedicated to connecting with recruiters.  It’s no different for someone over 50.  Recruiters find people for jobs, they don’t find jobs for people.  Unless you are a superstar, don’t expect any recruiter to do back flips because you called or sent your resume.  The chances that he/she has a job order on her/his desk that you would fit into are as likely as you winning the Power Ball.

But there is another reason that recruiters should be a small part of your job search effort when you are over 50.  It’s rare that they go on a dinosaur hunt!

OK, maybe a bit severe – I hear the “hrrumphs”.  No, you are far from being a dinosaur, in your mind and in reality.  But there’s a  chance your recruiter perceives you that way personally (not likely), or, that seed has been planted through an off-the-record, “you-didn’t-hear-me-say-this” conversation” with the recruiter’s client (more likely).

Recruiters like to get paid

Remember the business model:  he who writes the check dictates.  So if your recruiter, in this little off-the-record conversation with his late-30-something client, is asked to bring in someone south of 50, your recruiter probably slips on the ageist hat.  She/he is not going to put that check in jeopardy by getting on an anti-ageism soapbox even if they are a dedicated advocate.  Not if they want to survive.

So, regardless of personal bent, your perceived recruiter ally may weed you out for this project, along with your fellow over-50 job seekers, and you’ll never know it.  It all happens silently and secretly in the recruiting process.

Is your “dinosaur” showing?

Successful recruiters are very good sleuths.  They can pick a “dinosaur–in-training” with little effort, especially with the advent of social media, particularly LinkedIn.  Think of the ways that you can send off a dinosaur odor:

  1. LinkedIn photo – typically the biggest giveaway and the hardest to overcome. There is a limit to what photo-shop can do.  Answer:  do the best you can and have it professionally done and in current business attire.  Hint:  no photos with grandkids with grandma.
  2. Work history on the resume and LinkedIn profile – limit your history to 10 years back, maybe 15 if there are exceptional achievements back then that merit inclusion.
  3. Graduation dates: Put a 1980’s graduation date on anything, the cat’s out of the bag.  Just state the degree, forget the dates.
  4. Email address – AOL, MSN, Yahoo, Earthlink (really – they are still out there) all say “Methuselah”. Get Gmail.
  5. No training in more current or trending technologies – if the last professional development course you took was on Cobol, VOIP or Quickbooks 2.0, you are better off leaving that out than mentioning it.
  6. 14 connections on LinkedIn – it’s been around since 2003 and acknowledged as THE default network for job seekers and recruiters. If you don’t have a 500+ in the third line under your headline, you are telling me, as a recruiter, that you are out of touch.

Look, let’s not whip this horse any deader with more do’s and don’ts.  I’m just saying, be aware that the job market is rife with hidden, silent ageism and recruiters and their clients are both culpable – as a part of the business equation. That’s not likely to change.  As recruiters, we get away with it because it’s all hidden from you, or from anybody for that matter.  It’s business, man!

Here’s a couple of real-life examples: 

I have a healthcare client who won’t accept any candidates over 45 for a front desk receptionist position because they “just can’t keep up with our pace and our electronic records technology.”  I disagree with the premise but I bite my tongue and sidestep some obvious talent because my client has a bias based on one or two instances where someone didn’t perform.  It’s a business decision driven by little things like having married a lady 47 years ago who still likes to sleep inside and eat warm food.

In another instance, while with a successful biosciences recruiting firm, I teamed with my boss to take a job order for a data analyst from a very large east-coast client.  The hiring manager requested candidates “under 40, preferably with an undergrad degree from India, and 2 years of experience working with an American firm”  I did the LinkedIn search, came up with over 150 suspects.   In under an hour, my boss and I “discriminated” that list down to a manageable list of 25.    Physical appearance and age (photo and length of work history) were key parts of the screening out process.  Who knew but the two of us? Nobody.

This goes on every day inside of recruiting firms.

So, is there a solution coming with this problem?

First, don’t let your LinkedIn profile and resume scream “over-the-professional-hill”.  Second,  limit your reliance on recruiters and shift your search strategy to networking.  Less than 10% of open positions are filled by independent recruiters.  Over 80% of open positions are filled through referrals as a result of effective networking.

I had a coaching client, 58-years old, who networked herself successfully into three job interviews over the course of a month and then blew away a 30-something hiring manager at a large pharmaceutical firm by positioning herself as an experienced professional problem solver.  Age concerns never surfaced as she demonstrated her understanding of the manager’s challenges and how she could help solve them.  She’s in her dream job, making 25% more than her last job and has much more control over her time and life.

I encourage you to check out my five-part newsletter series entitled “Double-nickeled and Stuck! Getting re-employed at 55 or beyond.”   Click here for Part One and follow it through all five pieces.  I believe it will help you with tools to work around this, and other challenges, you may face in the job search process.

 

 

 

Is Your Nose Pressed Against Reality?

 

At the request of a dear friend whose wife has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I read a book entitled “Jan’s Story”.  It’s a very poignant book by Barry Peterson, acclaimed CBS reporter and foreign correspondent, about a man’s journey with his wife, Jan, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Barry coined a phrase in the book that really grabbed and stuck with me.  He learned that he had to daily “press his nose against the reality” of the finality of his wife’s condition and its impact on his life and health.

The phrase resonated with me because it’s not something I do well in my own life, even dealing with issues of far less magnitude.  It was a not-so-subtle reminder that I, like most, wear masks, live in denial, and avoid confronting realities in my life to escape the pressure created by facing reality. For instance, that “gap” between where I am and where I really want to be.

Unaddressed realities seem to come clearer in later life as we are forced to “press our nose” against them and make major decisions while facing a shorter horizon.

 

I see this frequently as I engage potential candidates regarding executive or middle-management opportunities in my recruiting business.  Because most of the positions call for deep experience and expertise in a given area, I’m often reaching out to professionals who have entered the “second half” or “third stage” of their lives – likely facing fewer days ahead than behind.

It doesn’t take long or too many questions to determine if a candidate is in denial about some of the realities of what lies ahead for them in this second half.  Some have been granted “early, unintentional, temporary retirement” and, in some cases, are getting desperate for a job.  Imminent unemployment is a reality for some as their corporate home morphs around them.  Others are just restless and feeling that “stirring” called “is this all there is?”

On occasion, some of these candidates become coaching clients as the result of our dialog.

If I’m effective in my coaching relationship with them, I am able to help them “press their nose” against some unacknowledged realities.

Here are a few of the realities I see that people over 50 aren’t facing as they enter this late-life transition:

  1. Corporate employment is now the riskiest place to be. With a few exceptions, a company’s claim of loyalty to their employees is lip service.  Given the choice between the one-time expense of a robot or piece of software and an ongoing outlay to an employee to do that work, it becomes an easy bottom-line decision.  Stir in the specter of mergers or acquisitions and the inevitable “RIF’s” and the risk of not “pressing the nose” against this reality can be a tough pill to swallow for a dedicated corporate employee.

 In my “reinvention” coaching, I am direct in my message that the last place to look for security today is in the corporate fold.  If you are over 50 and have been downsized but intend to return to the corporate ranks, be prepared for two shocks.  Unless your skills are current, exceptionally deep, and unique, you can count on: (1) an extended search, especially if self-directed (think one month for every $10k of salary); (2) your chances of duplicating your previous salary being pretty slim.

  1. Pace and magnitude of change. There is one guaranteed constant in life and that is change.   The pace of change has never been faster and more profound than it is today, fueled by digital technology. As boomers and pre-boomers, we are particularly vulnerable to the eventuality of technology disrupting what we do.
  2. You are (most likely) already obsolete. I recall coming across a startling statistic a couple of years ago that revealed that over 40% of college graduates never open another book after graduation.  If you are over 50, you were indoctrinated with the linear-life plan I call the 20-40-20 plan that looks like this.  Learning after school didn’t go much beyond what the job required and the pace of change, until digitization arrived, was mostly modest and manageable without much skills upgrade.  Today, new technologies are rapidly outstripping and obsoleting many skills and may be dropping your value in the marketplace.  Gaps will be revealed quickly in the job search process.  It’s imperative in today’s job market to stay current and continuously upgrade your skill set to be in step with technology developments.
  3. Your goals for a traditional retirement are  – and should be – caput.  Average retirements savings for Americans reaching the traditional retirement age of 65 is $95,776 according to the Economic Policy Institute.  Healthcare cost for a couple retiring in 2016 at age 65 living to average lifespan, over and above Medicare coverage: $250-400,000 according to Nationwide Insurance. Do the math.  Still, we cling to this 20th-century artifact called retirement and strive to hit a politically-driven artificial finish line to achieve something that is unnatural – pulling back, withdrawing.  Then we discover that it keeps us from realizing our full life potential and robs our culture of a gold mine of talent, creativity, and wisdom. Fortunately, more and more boomers are “pressing their nose” against the reality of this failed 100-year old model and abandoning the “vocation to vacation” retirement model for one of continued contribution.

Are you at, or approaching, late mid-life and haven’t cracked a book or taken a course in the last 5-10 years that would bring your skills more in line with emerging technologies in your field?  Have you “pressed your nose against the reality” of that necessity?

I’ll simply pass on the warning, as a recruiter and career coach having dealt with a number of 50+ professionals in that rut, the re-entry into employment under those conditions is a b****!

Example:  An over-50 coaching client of mine was forced to “press his nose against reality” recently when he received a hard message from a recruiter he had contacted about a job that he really wanted.  It was, on paper, a logical match, in the field he had been “riffed” from 10 months earlier.

The veteran recruiter laid it out succinctly and diplomatically for him:  his clients won’t give him a look for two primary reasons: (1) extended unemployment with no part-time or lesser employment or volunteer work to show initiative and to maintain skills; (2) very limited skills- upgrade training in last five years of employment and no effort during his unemployment.

Fortunately, this gentleman has learned a hard lesson and landed on his feet.  He has taken a somewhat risky straight commission sales position in a related field while he continues his search for his ideal position.    It took moving some ego aside, but he will put himself in a role that will help him stay current, polish his skills and better position himself with employers and recruiters as his search continues.

Disruption is as given

Peter Diamandis, is an M.D. entrepreneur with degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering who has started 15 different companies.  In podcast #1  of a series entitled “Exponential Wisdom” that he does with Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach (available free on I-tunes), he stated:

“Every company, every product, every service will become disrupted, obsoleted. You will either disrupt yourself or someone else will.”

Where does that leave you relative to reality as you look forward?

How susceptible is your company or industry to disruption by digital technology?  And in what ways?  Disruption doesn’t necessarily mean dissolution.  Often it is a case of some new types of jobs being created as some are destroyed.  Have you positioned yourself, educationally and politically, to move into those new roles?

How susceptible are your skills to digital disruption? Are you willing to re-don the learning hat and protect yourself against personal obsolescence?

Do some research on what professions are “safe”, if there is such a thing. Hint: my hair stylist and plumber don’t seem at all concerned.

Here’s an article posted on LinkedIn that weighs in on the subject.

What reality do you need to press your nose against? How willing are you to take the steps necessary to deal with that reality?  Let me know your thoughts on this broad topic.  What have you been doing to stay ahead of the disruption curve?

Are You “Flunking” Retirement- or About To?

 

Flunking retirement?  Now there’s a strange concept.  How does one “flunk” out of one of life’s most coveted and cherished prizes?

I first came across the concept five years ago when I read a book entitled “Don’t Retire, REWIRE!” by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners, former executive recruiters and a husband and wife team with 25+ years of experience working in the area of personal and professional transition.

Following hundreds of interactions with people in late life transitions and actual interviews with hundreds of pre-retirees and retirees, they discovered that the old adage “if you fail to plan, then plan to fail” comes into play in moving into and through retirement.  It turns out, a significant number of people do, in fact, flunk retirement.

Outlooks and attitudes toward retirement differed amongst pre-retirees they interviewed and fell into one of four categories.  Perhaps you’ll see yourself in one of these:

  1. Those who were excited and knew what they were getting into.
  2. Those who were excited but had no idea what they were getting into.
  3. Those who were panicked and had no idea how to get in control.
  4. Those who were angry and not physically or mentally ready but being forced into it.

My general observation would say that #2 dominates.  There is research out there that indicates 70% of retirees go into retirement with no semblance of a non-financial plan.

Doing it right

Some of this was borne out this week when I had coffee with some good friends, a couple I hadn’t connected with for over a decade.  I’ll call them Carol and Ron.  Carol had retired four years ago from her sales jobs with the same telecom company after 32 years (that is not a misprint), the last 4 or 5 of which was pure agony.  Yes, she did it for the money – you probably would too if you were a consistent and award-winning six-figure earner.

She is 63.  Ron is 64 and a successful sales rep in a different industry. Ron is not yet retired and is negotiating an exit plan with his company.  He, unlike most his age, is in the driver’s seat.  His company really needs him and doesn’t want him to retire.

I wanted to talk with them because I knew them to be disciplined and diligent in everything they do, especially when it came to the financial side of their life.  I remembered they had worked with a financial planner for many years.

Carol and Ron are poster children for how to do it right.   Plan.  Save.  Get good advice.  Diversify.  Pay off the house. Don’t overspend. No debt.  Honestly, it was pretty humbling to see what they have done and hear how they’ve done it since I fall seriously short of it all.

Sitting there in a million dollar home, beautifully and comfortably upgraded, it was apparent that they are happy with what they had achieved on the financial side of their life.

Is that all there is?

As we discussed what full retirement for the two of them is going to look like, I detected a bit of a chink in the armor.  The conversation didn’t go much beyond looking forward to more travel.  Oh, and more painting on her part, a hobby she took up upon her retirement. And probably more golf for Ron.

They, for the most part, do the right things health-wise (except for Ron’s admitted attachment to beef) so they acknowledge the possibility of them both realizing a “longevity bonus”.  Their financial planner has wisely helped them plan out their finances to age 90.  I think they’ll get there.  But I’m not sure they had really factored that into the vision for their retirement.

What I didn’t hear was much beyond pure leisure in that impending retired life.

And I get that.  It’s normal and makes perfect sense. That diligence, that discipline, those years of hard work deserves a return.  And what better payback than to see the world, go where few are able to go. And to kick back and pursue deferred personal passions.

Until it all turns into “is this all there is?”

The world will benefit

I think I know this couple and what is going to happen.  They are going to flunk traditional retirement.  And that’s a good thing.  Because when they do, they, and we, will benefit.

This isn’t a La-z-boy couple. And I don’t think they are going to be a “world-traveler-look-at-my-photo-album” couple forever either.  They are too diligent, too intelligent, too disciplined and too forward thinking to withdraw into the margins of life and society.

Be it three years, five years, I predict that failing at traditional retirement will happen for them.   And we will all benefit because they will show up in meaningful service to their fellow man, in some way, some form,  resurrecting the talents, skills, and experiences they have acquired and turning them back to work on behalf of society.

The form that this takes will be unique to them and is part of the adventure of what I’ll call “second half discovery and reinvention.”

An Attitude Instrument

I see the possibility that Ron and Carol will emerge as part of the growing ranks of the “forever young, forever passionate, and forever engaged”.  This is an attitude that Mitch Anthony saw more prevalent as he did the research for his seminal book “The New Retirementality”.  In these energetic second-halfers, he isolated five internal focuses and patterns steering their lives safely “through the existential seas of fulfilled and pleasurable living day by day.”

He calls these the Vitamin C’s of Successful Aging:

  • Vitamin C1 – Connectivity: the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction right after retirement was not health or wealth but the breadth of a person’s social network.
  • Vitamin C2 – Challenge: the brain is a muscle that atrophies. Beyond 50, we can put a finger in the dike of Alzheimer’s and dementia by having “riddles to ponder, problems to solve, and things to fix.”
  • Vitamin C3- Curiosity: curiosity guarantees “a pulse in the brain and a reason to keep our bodies healthy.” He who no longer wants to learn should order the tombstone.
  • Vitamin C4 – Creativity: we can be creative and keep the powers of observation alive until the end.  There is no end point to creativity.  We just have to be “curious, intrigued, expressive and intentional.”
  • Vitamin C5 – Charity: studies have confirmed the ameliorative effects of charitable living on quality and longevity of life.

No one should feel bad about flunking a retirement built on a 125-year old false premise.  Ron and Carol certainly won’t. Let’s hope more and more people will fail.  Let’s fight the comparison-driven desire for comfort and inactivity, rise up against our youth-oriented culture and help prop this country back up by resurrecting the energy, vitality, creativity, and wisdom underneath the grey and wrinkles.

I suspect the theme here is upsetting to some – or perhaps many –  because traditional retirement is so coveted and entrenched in our thinking.  I’d love to hear from those opposed as well as those who agree.  Scroll down and leave a comment and/or trip over to our Make Aging Work Facebook page and help us with a Like.

It’s Time to Get Real About Our Lifestyle – It’s Killing Us!!

“Americans are retiring later, dying sooner and sicker in-between”

That’s the headline to an article published in the Standard-Examiner on October 23, 2017.  My thanks to fellow re-invention coach, blogger and author John Tarnoff of Boomer Reinvention for posting it on LinkedIn.

According to the Society of Actuaries (who could argue with such an exciting group?), the meteoric rise in U.S. average life expectancy may have begun to recede.  According to their research, age-adjusted mortality rate – a measure of the number of deaths per year – rose 1.2 percent from 2014 to 2015. That’s the first year-over-year increase since 2005, and only the second rise greater than 1 percent since 1980.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.  After all, over 100,000+ years, we increased from an average life expectancy of 18 (Neanderthal) to 30 (Roman centurion) to 47 (your great-great grandma) to 80 today.  Graphically, that looks like this – in just 100 years, life expectancy increased more than in all of human history.

 

Graph source: Ken Dychtwald, Agewave.com

Don’t all good things have an endpoint?

While the article is a bit dismaying it’s far from revelatory.  I’m inclined to invoke the overworked cliché “the chickens are coming home to roost”.

We’ve gotten really good at adopting lifestyles that are killing us slowly – and early.

Following our phenomenal success in stamping out myriad infectious diseases, throttling infant mortality, cleaning up our air and water, improving food and water quality and distribution and improving education, we now succeed in finding ways to kill ourselves early in the face of all that we know about how to do the opposite.

Bio-scientific and biomedical research of the last 30 years have provided us with more than we need to know to continue to extend our average life expectancy and move toward our full biological potential of 120+ years.

Discoveries of how our bodies and brains function, down to the cellular level, leave us with little excuse for not extending our lives – or to at least keep them healthier as we age.   But we seem to persist in ignoring the surprisingly simple recommendations that emerge from the research.

A receding life expectancy is hand-in-hand with a number of errant lifestyle signals that are emerging.  To wit:

  1. Eighty percent of American adults do not meet the government’s national physical activity recommendations for aerobic activity and muscle strengthening. Around 45 percent of adults are not sufficiently active to achieve health benefits. (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).
  2. More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are considered to be overweight or obese. More than one-third (35.7 percent) of adults are considered to be obese. More than 1 in 20 (3 percent) have extreme obesity. Almost 3 in 4 men (74 percent) are considered to be overweight or obese.
  3. The American Diabetes Association reports that the number of people who have diabetes increased by 382 percent from 1988 to 2014.
  4. The CDC recently reported that as many as one-third of the U.S. population may be pre-diabetic and not know it.
  5. The weight of the average American increased by 15 pounds over the last 20 years – but we didn’t get any taller.

So what is a lazy, overweight, stressed-out, fast-food addict to do?

Nothing complicated, really.  Actually, pretty simple.  Not to be confused with easy. Difficult because it requires change and we don’t like change, especially the older we get.

How complicated is this health strategy?

  • Lose weight. No, no – don’t diet.  Diets don’t work.  If they did, why would we spend $35 billion every year on the latest and greatest?   Get the fat out and the plants in. Start there.
  • Get your heart rate up into your exercise range every day.  Simple formula: 220 minus your age times .65 and .85.  That’s the range you should take your heart for at least 30 minutes a day, preferably six days a week.  Sustained weight loss only comes when you combine diet and exercise.  One without the other won’t get it done.
  • Know your biomarkers. Get with your doc, get a thorough physical and find out – and understand – your key health bio-markers and where they should be and take corrective action if they are out of whack.  What are the biomarkers?  At a minimum, know where you are and where you should be with the following (most of these should come from pre-physical blood panels):
    • Blood pressure
    • HDL, LDL, triglycerides and total cholesterol
    • Glucose (blood sugar)
    • Uric acid
    • Calcium, phosphorous, potassium and sodium
    • Bilirubin, total protein, and albumin (liver function indicators)
    • BUN (blood urea nitrogen) and creatinine – kidney function
    • Waist size (under 40” or men, 35” for women)
    • PSA (men)
    • TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone)
    • Homocysteine (amino acid associated with vascular disease, Alzheimer’s, colon cancer and osteoporosis
    • C-reactive protein – related to inflammation

  • Reduce the stress in your life. The CDC claims that 90% of doctor’s visits are, in some ways, related to problems brought on by stress.  Stress releases harmful chemicals from our endocrine system such as cortisol and adrenaline.  That system evolved to protect us from saber-toothed tigers and warring clans.  Unless you still have those in your life (or equivalents), seriously consider finding ways to stop the release of those harmful, insidious chemicals. What works:
    • Meditation/mindfulness – get alone with your breathing for 15 minutes a day, and periodically throughout the day as stress builds
    • Exercise – surprise, surprise. Hands down the best stress reliever.  A twofer – stress relief and a better circulatory system and physique.
    • Stop comparing – comparison to others or temporal standards creates stress. Keeping up with the Joneses is a life-shortener.  Find out who you really are and be it.   Build your own dreams, not somebody else’s.

We can be better than this!

Our lack of health care literacy, laziness, and capitulation to convenience sustains the $35 billion diet and the $26 billion health and fitness club industries year after year.  Both see a big surge in revenue at the beginning of each year. They know its coming and they know the surge will wane and circle back around again the next year.  They are both business models built on our naivete and inability to discipline ourselves.

There’s another industry – in fact, the largest on the planet – that thrives based on the same human behavior.  That is our health-care –I’m sorry, our disease-care – system.  It’s built on repair, not prevention.  It doesn’t strive to turn off the spigot but rather to mop up the water, often when it’s too late.  Pretty simple solutions – drug it or cut it out.

Would it be too “pollyannish” to propose we help disrupt all three industries by taking charge of our own health?  Yeah, that’s a pretty radical, wasted thought.  But, then again, is it?  I’m trying to do my part.  Hope you join me.

No doubt you have some opinions in this area.  Leave me a comment, let me know your thoughts.

 

“Double-nickeled and Stuck! Getting re-employed at 55 or beyond” – Part Three (c)

If you’ve tracked with us through the first four “Double-nickeled and Stuck” posts, we’ve laid a foundation for the most critical piece of a job search – networking. With an optimally leveraged LinkedIn profile that is consistent with a properly formatted resume, the pieces are in place to move to where the success of your job search has an 80%-or-better chance of happening – networking.

That’s the reality. Over 80% of jobs are filled in this country as the result of referrals and networking. And that’s despite all the chest-thumping, flag-waving and heavy advertising by the likes of Indeed.com, ZipRecruiter, and myriad other popular job boards (has anybody seen Monster or CareerBuilder lately? – it seems they’ve left the party).

Some people are great networkers, most aren’t. Not that they couldn’t be. There just isn’t a perceived need. For many job seekers, it’s just plain laziness combined with a low level of perceived need. Maintaining a network, let alone adding to one, isn’t a priority when you’re up to your arse in the boss’s unrealistic expectations and projects.

Chances are, that’s where you are. So, now we’re up against it and gotta do something – quickly.

So let’s cut to the chase and dispense with the network building that you should have been doing while you were employed. We need to do a frontal assault and initiate a very targeted, almost emergency-like, strategic networking plan. You don’t have time to try to connect with your brother-in-law’s sister’s cousin who is a high-powered something-or-other just because your brother-in-law said you should and so you can claim you know him/her. That’s OK if this high-powered something-or-other happens to be a potential hiring manager in your space or is connected to a potential hiring manager.

Time and focused effort are of the essence under these conditions.  They need to be focused on finding a path to hiring managers.

Six part strategy

1. Get a paid LinkedIn job-seeker account. You can be on LinkedIn free – but the free account has been stripped bare since Microsoft bought LinkedIn.

You have two paid job-seeker options: Premium Career at $29.99 per month or Premium Business at $47.99. Both come with a free one-month trial. The Career package helps some but not a lot because it puts limits on who you can view and you only get three free InMails. Inmail is LinkedIn’s private email process that claims to greatly enhance your chance of getting a response from the LinkedIn member that you inmail. (Note from Gary to LinkedIn: it doesn’t so much anymore.)

You might want to consider the Business account for the purposes of your concentrated search because it gives you unlimited people-browsing of 1st- and 2nd- level connections but no visibility to 3rd-degree connections. Now, if you only have eight connections to start with, that isn’t going to help a lot so you’ll want to get your first level connections up as much as possible as quickly as possible during your search. That should result naturally as you network. Step 2 below will help you with this.

2. Take a day and start building a “tribe”. Any old Rolodexes stuffed in a closet? How about those business cards you’ve been collecting and doing nothing with? Who is in your Outlook contacts list that you’ve forgotten about? College classmates? Graduate school classmates? Your 1st level LinkedIn connections?

Your goal here is to try to come up with 100-150 names of people that you would feel comfortable calling to ask a favor.

They can fit into one of four categories:

Connectors – people who know a lot of people
Mentors – people you can learn from
Industry experts – people you need to know
Peers – who you can help and expect nothing in return

These people should become 1st level LinkedIn connections. Find them on LinkedIn and send them a connection request if they aren’t already a 1st level connection (see a suggested connection request script below in point 4).

3. Develop a target list of 30-50 companies that you may have interest in working for. This can be the toughest part of the strategy. Realistically, this list won’t all be in your existing industry, especially if you are not willing to relocate.

View it this way: you have deeply developed skills that are transferable to other industries. Open your thinking and consider other industries.

Here’s a key understanding for this step. We don’t care if they have an open position or not. So don’t limit your list to companies only posting open positions. You won’t get to 30-50 if you impose that limiter.

Here’s an example: a current coaching client is a highly-skilled marketing manager with a long, successful track record in a heavy industry niche, of which there are few other similar companies in his current location. He has no desire to relocate so he is reaching out to totally unrelated industries such as healthcare, software development, start ups. It’s been a challenge to get a list of 50 doing this but it’s developing.

4. Using LinkedIn, research and find 3-5 people to contact within those companies.
When you select a company by typing the name into the LinkedIn Search bar at the top left of your Home or Profile page, the top banner of the company will contain a live link in blue that says “See all __ employees on LinkedIn”. That’s where you will find people you may want to contact.

Most thumbnail profiles that appear will have their titles. Certainly, you will be looking for those who will likely be the decision makers for hiring someone with your background. But don’t limit it to them. Look for people that you may already know or who are doing what you do in the company, or did at one point.

At this point, you should have a range of 90-250 names to contact (30 companies x 3 contacts, 50 companies x 5 contacts). You’ll need that many because we are talking about a numbers game here which will become clearer as we work through the rest of the process.

Now, here’s where we inject a twist that most job-seekers don’t always view as rational. Don’t call these people to ask them for help in finding you a job. Why? Because people don’t like being put into that position and you will have ended a relationship before you even got started. We have a different strategy.

First, send a personalized LinkedIn connection request. You can often add a personal touch by looking for the common connections, work history, schools attended, etc.

For instance, maybe something like this:

Hi Allen.  I came across your LinkedIn profile. Your career experience is very intriguing.  I also see that we (have the same alma mater/we share a common acquaintance in Sadie Sue/worked at the same company back in ’08/etc.).  I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. Gary Foster

LinkedIn forces you to be succinct.  You have a max of 300 characters and spaces for this connection invitation.

Once sent and accepted, you’ve now set yourself up for the key networking step.

5. Call or email with a request for an informational interview. Informational interviews are telephone or person-to-person interviews that are not designed to get you a job but to get AIR – Advice, Insight and Recommendations.

This process is NOT about making direct requests to be considered for a position. This is about building a relationship, not getting a job.

If they’ve connected with you on LinkedIn, you’ve moved from a dreaded cold call to a warm call.

The intent of the conversation is twofold: (1) to get information about the company to help you determine if it is a company that you would want to work for and (2) to position yourself for consideration for a position if one exists, or develops later.

Click here and download a document that has email and voicemail scripts that you can use to arrange these informational interviews.

If you are fortunate to have connected with someone who may be the hiring manager for your desired position, all the better. But don’t hesitate to reach out to others who may know of unposted positions or movement within the company that may be opening up opportunities in your area of expertise. Moreover, they may have a direct pipeline to the hiring manager, and, depending on your effectiveness in the informational interview, may offer to hand-walk your resume into the hiring manager, or at least encourage him/her to take your call.

Here’s a taste of the type of questions you should consider asking when in an informational interview, courtesy of Nancy Collamer, career consultant, speaker, and author at MyLifestyleCareer.com from her book “Second Act Careers”.

• What do you enjoy most about your job?
• What are the most frustrating aspects of your job?
• What are the most important characteristics for success in this career/company?
• What training should I pursue to make myself more marketable in this field?
• Which professional associations would you recommend that I join?
• What are the challenges, trends, and opportunities in this profession/company?
• Are there good options for freelance or consulting work within this industry?
• Which magazines, journals or websites do you recommend?
• Are there opportunities for flexible work arrangements?
• Is there someone else you recommend that I talk to?
• May I use your name in making the introduction?

6. The last step is to follow up. If you succeed in getting an informational interview, be sure to do the following:

• Send them an immediate note or email.
• Let them know what developed as a result of the time you spent with them, including any connections that they don’t know that came from their recommended contacts.
• Stay in touch periodically – keep them in your “tribe”.

C’mon Gary – are you serious about all this?????
Dead serious! Sound a bit daunting? Yep – it sounds daunting mostly because it’s so different from what most new job seekers think should be the approach. Today’s search requires a process.  This is a process that works – when worked.

I’ve seen this work – beautifully. I’ve seen it fail – miserably. The common denominator in both situations? The job seeker. This process requires attitude, commitment, and persistence.

Go back and read Part Two in this series where we talked about attitude and commitment and the need to maintain energy through this process and guarding against overwhelm.

Plain and simple, we are suggesting you play a numbers game here that 90% or your peers won’t do. That’s why they don’t find the good jobs or get back to their previous salaries.  They compromise and “settle for.” Most often, they will retreat back and follow all the sheep back into the application process.

Why 90-250 names? Simple. You’ll be lucky to get one response out of five calls you make or emails you send. 1:5 = 18 to 50 conversations. Do you think that something might develop out of that many conversations? Count on it!

Work it daily – but don’t kill yourself!
We suggested in Part Two, limit your search to thirty hours. Give this calling/emailing effort 2-3 hours a day, EVERY DAY, keeping a spreadsheet log of your calls, emails, contacts, and conversations. Have faith that it will develop.

I’ll share two contrasting experiences I’ve had with coaching clients.

Case A: a 58-year-old registered nurse with a 10-year track record as the Clinical Manager of a large urology practice. Six-figure earner with a stellar track record. Got sideways with the lead physician and walked out – and then panicked.  She found me on LinkedIn, we started a coaching relationship and she followed the inverted pyramid process to the letter, including this networking strategy. Within less than six weeks, she found herself with three interviews and ended up in a dream job as a clinical liason for a cancer drug company doing what she really loves doing – educating clinicians on the efficacy of cancer drugs. She now travels extensively, makes 25% more than she was making at the urology practice and is thrilled with the new control that she has over her time.

Case B – not so good. Similar situation in some ways. Talented six-figure marketing person needing a job. Followed the inverted pyramid to the point of the networking and tried it for a while but succumbed to the difficulty and rejection in the numbers game and returned to the application process which only heightened her frustration. I couldn’t convince her to stay committed to the process and our coaching relationship dissolved. I just checked her profile – finally landed on her feet 12 months later but it appears to have required a relocation.

Trust the process – turn it into a game, a game with a very promising finish line.

P.S. Here’s a helpful hack for you. LinkedIn profiles rarely provide emails and you are limited on the number of free inmails you get. There is a Google Chrome extension called ContactOut that does an amazing job of providing emails for people you pull up on LinkedIn. Go to www.contactout.com using Chrome as your browser and download it.

The program will put a little black magnifying glass on your top browser search bar. When you pull up a profile, click on the magnifying glass and a window will open in the upper right of your screen and tell you if they have an email address for that person. I have found they have emails for upwards of 70% of the people I look at. You have to be careful because some of the emails are associated with companies that the individual left, so they aren’t always current. But if they have non-company emails address like gmail or yahoo, they usually are still alive.

I hope this series has been helpful. We would appreciate hearing from you as to what worked for you and what didn’t. Scroll down and leave us a comment below.

“Double-nickeled and Stuck! Getting re-employed at 55 or beyond” – Part Three (b)

In Part Three (a), we laid out some of the changes to the job search process that have evolved recently in the face of advancing technologies and changing economic conditions.  We also focused on the first of the three components in the inverted-pyramid strategy that comprises an effective job search for someone past the 50-year mark – the resume.

In Part Three (b), we dive into the second tier of the pyramid – social media.  But not just any social media.  If you haven’t been under that proverbial rock, you know that LinkedIn has become the 800 pound gorilla in job search.  We’ll dig into why and how to use it most effectively.

Optimizing the resume and the LinkedIn profile are the foundation on which you build the ultimate solution to regaining meaningful re-employment – networking.

 

LinkedIn – friend or foe?

If you are a bit of a Luddite and eschew social media, let me just say that LinkedIn stands apart from the Facebook-like social media and to shun it is to put a huge hole in your ability to re-enter the job market.

 

Here are two statistics that should help you understand why LinkedIn has to be a key part of your search strategy.

  • 500 million users worldwide; 128 million users in the U.S.
  • Over 90% of recruiters (corporate and third party) and hiring managers  use Linked In to find people.

For more detail on what LinkedIn has become, try this link.

For a job seeker, LinkedIn has two purposes:

  1. get noticed
  2. network effectively. 

Let’s not make it any more complicated than that.

Get noticed – FIRST!

I’m going to come at you from the perspective of a recruiter and a power user of LinkedIn to find people, because I’m both.  I suggest you put on a recruiter’s hat as you think about how you are going to put LinkedIn to work – and I’m going to fit you for that hat.  So try to track with me on this.

What is a recruiter trying to accomplish, whether they are third party, like myself, or an HR corporate “talent acquisition representative”  or, for that matter, a LinkedIn-savvy hiring manager operating on his/her own?   OK, this is a “duh” – they are looking for someone to fill a new or vacated position that requires a specific set of qualifications and experience.  But, here is a key understanding.  They want that list of prospects to be short.  These are busy people.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to not only be on the short list but to be as close as possible to the top of results that their search produces.

I’m going to try to keep this fairly simple and manageable by just focusing on what I feel are the four most important components of your LinkedIn profile.  There are other components that deserve attention but, IMHO, get these four done right first.  These do the heavy lifting on getting you found.

But first, a warning.  You’re being scanned

You have 6-12 seconds to make an impression with your profile.  That’s been researched and documented.  Recruiters, by nature and necessity, scan both resumes and LinkedIn profiles and spend, on average 1/10th of a minute looking at you.  If you don’t grab them in the first one third of your LinkedIn profile and “incent” them to look at more of your profile, they are moving on. So you have to say it early and effectively.

#1: A picture is worth a – – – – –

Amazingly, 30-40% of the folks on LinkedIn don’t have a picture.  Even if you’ve got a face ideally suited for radio, I suggest a professionally done photograph with a smile.  I saw stats recently that said you are seven times more likely to be found if you have a picture, and eleven times more likely if you show teeth in a nice smile.  Who knew?

I won’t speak for other recruiters but if my initial search has produced a list of, say, 200 people that I want to pare down to 25 or less, my first round of elimination are those without a picture.  Seriously, without even looking at their qualifications.  It just tells me they aren’t current,  probably a bit sloppy, or, more likely, aren’t interested in being found to start with.

Don’t cut corners here.  Forget the I-phone selfie. Get the photo done professionally, dress professionally and have a solid, light-colored background.  No distracting, busy background.

#2:  Headlines sell newspapers – and job seekers

Right underneath your picture is the most valuable piece of LinkedIn real estate – your headline.  It’s one of the first, if not the first place the LinkedIn search algorithm goes in reviewing a profile.

There you have a space of 120 characters to tell the hiring world what you would like to be found for.

If you don’t, it defaults to the title on your current employment in your work history.  Maybe you’ll be lucky and that title sufficiently states what you would like to be found for, but that’s pretty rare.  You need to proactively go in and edit that headline using the titles that you are guessing that a recruiter or hiring manager is typing into her/his search string.

Here’s my LinkedIn profile headline.  These are the things that I want people to contact me about.

Medical Recruiting | Executive Search | Job Search and Career Coach | Speaker

Here’s another from one of my past coaching clients:

Laboratory Sales Professional | Healthcare Operations Management | Business Development Director

Here’s another one from a referral that just contacted me this week looking for some assistance on re-entering the job market:

Consultant seeking project or full time employment.

Headline #3 doing any good? No.  In fact, I think a headline like that backfires, especially if the rest of the profile reveals someone past 55.  Again, headlines that say “seeking new opportunities”, or something to that effect,  fall to the bottom of my list of prospects. As a recruiter, I am paid to find top performers who are currently fully-employed and “heads down” but open to new opportunities.

How do I know I have the right titles?

As an experienced professional, you should know what titles are the most common in your industry and area of expertise.  But if there is some doubt, or you want to make sure that you pick up on shifts in job titles in your space, review job postings that appear on the career sections of the professional organization websites that you follow.  If they don’t have a career site, contact someone at the organization for advice.  Or who do you know in your network that does what you do that might have some insight into title changes?

With 120 characters, you have room to include different wording of titles.  Start with something.  Remember, editing your headline is a 2-minute experience if you need to change or add something.

#3:  Summary and Work History

Right below your photo and headline is a summary section.  You’ll notice that when you click on anybody’s profile that this section only shows two lines of content with the option to “show more” to see the rest.

Remember the 1/10th of a minute?  You need to say in the approximately 230 characters (including spaces) in these two lines something that will catch the hiring manager/recruiter’s attention get them to and click on “show more”.  In the balance of the section, you should list 4-6 major accomplishments along with your special skills listed vertically using hard returns after each skill.

Here’s the Summary from  J.T. O’Donnell’s profile to illustrate what I mean.  J.T. is one of the premier LinkedIn trainers and long-time career and job search coach.

18+ years of experience in the development and delivery of HR, employment, recruiting, job search, and career development tools and resources. Delivered 200+ presentations to 10,000+ professionals on a wide variety of career topics. Managed teams of 50+ with budgets of $35M+.

Specialties:
Career Advice & Job Search Strategy
Career Assessment & Planning
Career Decoder
Interview Preparation
Salary Negotiation
Career Coaching
Personal Branding
Resume Development
LinkedIn Usage
Employment Branding
Team Training & Corporate Development
Executive Leadership Coaching
Social Media in the Workplace
Recruiting
Candidate Experience
Talent Acquisition & Retention Strategies

The Experience section, where you list your previous work history should emphasize results, accomplishments – notable and number or percentage-based achievements, much the same as your resume.   Again, remember the scanning.  Numbers jump off the page.  Numbers show productivity.  Numbers show problem solving.

The Experience section must be consistent with the resume.  It doesn’t have to be an exact duplicate of the resume but it must be consistent.  You don’t want to create doubt through gaps or inconsistencies between the two.

But I’m going to give away my age!

Yeah, maybe.  But you can be smart about it and not put your 1984 graduation date in your education section.  Just state the college/university and the degree.

And don’t go back more than 15 years in the Experience section.

Pictures don’t lie so there really aren’t any tricks there.  But I’d still go with a photo vs trying to hide the age by not having one.

#4: Endorsements and Recommendations

Endorsements and recommendations can help you come up higher on a list of candidates that a recruiter’s search produces.

You can select 50 different skills in the Featured Skills and Endorsements section.  There are two schools of thought here: (1) take advantage of all 50 or (2) narrow your selection of skills to a 12-15 that really focus on your core skills.

I’m a fan of the 12-15. I think it makes it easier for the endorser to make a decision on what they are going to endorse you for.  Plus it’s easier to move the one’s that I want to get endorsements for into an order that will insure that I get more endorsement for that skill.

You can check out my selection of skills and how I’ve ordered them with a quick visit to my profile. 

How do you get endorsements? Give them.  Most savvy people that you endorse will endorse you back.  Strive to get 99+ showing on your key skills.  These skills should align with those stated in your headline.

Recommendations are important.  Here, I suggest being bold and reaching out to people who you are confident would recommend you.  Send them a recommendations request (click the three dots just to the right of your picture – you’ll find the “request a recommendation” link there).   If they don’t respond, remind them a couple of times – the failure to respond is usually because they are busy.  If a few reminders don’t get movement, be bold and write one for them and ask them if they would submit it.

Also, giving recommendations will usually generate a recommendation in return.

Keywords

Let me wrap this up by emphasizing the importance of keywords.  Keywords related to your skill set and to the types of positions you want to be found for need to be dispersed throughout your profile.  They can appear in your headline, your summary, your work history and in your endorsements.

LinkedIn has a very effective search algorithm and experienced recruiters will use very sophisticated search techniques using LinkedIn’s Boolean search method.  Keywords will be the foundation of any search.

Here’s a search string a former recruiting colleague of mine and LinkedIn power-user used to find a Mechanical Engineer with R&D background for one of his clients.  At first glance it’s a bit of a brain twister but on examination you can see how he has used different types of keywords, along with some filters ( current companies, location) to narrow his search.

R&D/Mechanical Engineer Search String

(“mechanical engineer” OR “mechanical engineering” OR “R&D Engineer” OR  “Research and Development Engineer”) AND (R&D OR “research and development”)  AND (“drug delivery” OR “drug-delivery” OR intravenous OR “combination device”)  AND “medical device” NOT director AND NOT (VP OR “vice president”) AND (“product launch” OR “product development”)  AND CAD AND (FEA OR “finite element analysis”)  + Current company: Sanofi, Medtronic, Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk, PA Consulting Group, West Pharmaceutical Services, Ypsomed AG, Cambridge Consultants, Team Consulting +Location: United States

This search produced less than a dozen qualified candidates for this recruiter from a universe of 458,680 mechanical engineers and 41,700 mechanical engineers with R&D background on LinkedIn and resulted in a very lucrative placement and a happy client and candidate. This illustrates why having the recruiter hat on and understanding the importance of having a complete profile with keywords can really enhance your search.    Your goal is be one of those twelve in a search. All of the above will help get you there.

Next series, we’ll take a look at a networking strategy – where the rubber really hits the road.

Let us know your thoughts about this post.  Have you had success using LinkedIn?  Other than just an up-to-date profile, how else have you used LinkedIn successfully in your job search?  Scroll down and leave us a comment – we appreciate your feedback.

 

 

“Double-nickeled and Stuck! Getting re-employed at 55 or beyond” – Part Three (a)

OOPS!

I goofed!  I didn’t plan ahead very well.  There’s no way I can cover Part Three in one post and expect you to hang in through all that needs to be covered.  I’m turning Part Three into its own part three series so it’s more digestible.  I guess sort of 3a, 3b, 3c.

So, in our three-part part-three , we’re going to try to put today’s job market into the proper perspective for the over-55 job seeker.  Part 3a is still pretty long. Hope you can hang with me.

Where do you fit?

I’m confident to say that you are reading this because you fit one of these categories:

  1. The unemployed
  2. The soon to be unemployed
  3. The “working worried”
  4. The “bored, is this all there is, I’m ready for something more fulfilling”
  5. The confused, concerned, frustrated, worried –  and angry

Did I miss a category?  If so, leave what I missed in the comment section below with a detailed description.  We’re here to learn also.

While you were asleep – – –

Let me officially welcome you to a job search environment that has NO resemblance to what you did on your last job search.

As an executive recruiter for the past 16 years and job search coach for the last five, I’m in this crazy job market and deal with folks in different situations every day.  I know it is a very difficult and different market.  For you to succeed, you not only need to be on top of your game, you’re going to be playing a different game.  Oh, and BTW, in addition to increased competition and complexity, we now get to sprinkle in something that will cling to us like a barnacle for the balance of our days – ageism.

Here’s a story of a coaching client of a few years back that epitomizes the traps that a new entrant into the search process can fall into.  This talented lady was only in her late 40’s but had been laid off from a business office management position where she had worked for nearly ten years.  Divorced with an active teen-ager at home (equestrian hobby – expeeensive!!), she immediately launched her own search.  In desperation, she had reached out to me with this story:

  1. Applied and sent her resume to 238 positions posted on various company websites and job boards over a nine-month period
  2. Had four interviews, three of which were scams. One legitimate opportunity which she wasn’t selected for.
  3. Had burned through the meager savings she had (nasty divorce!) and her unemployment checks were about to go away.

It had been ten years since a job change.   She actually got the job she just lost through a referral from a friend.  So her exposure to the job market was very thin.  She did what she assumed any job seeker would do.

I wish it were an isolated story.  It’s not.  It repeats with the majority of the calls I have with over-50 job seekers.  I had one this week with a PhD-level IT professional who had applied at over 50 locations in a 6-week long search effort with no interviews and only four actual responses – all form-letter turn downs.

Black-hole job seeking

 Applying is a natural response to a job market re-entry.  But it doesn’t acknowledge what economic shifts, technology and social media have done to the job market over the last 20 years, particularly in the last 5-10.

Back in the dark ages of 1995 when the internet was still in diapers, applying is what you did, but you did it by faxing your resume or filling out a paper application at the company location.

Then came the online era with CareerBuilder (1995), Monster (1999),  Indeed.com (2005) and their ilk along with Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) technology.  The process hadn’t really changed much – you could now just do it online from your desktop.  You still had to wait for a response but now for an email rather than a phone call or snail-mail letter.

Companies started getting hammered with resumes.  According to Forbes, in 2013 the average number of people who applied for any given job was 118.

Inc. Magazine says it was 250.

Applicant tracking systems developed to handle this onslaught.  With their development, the whole system shifted from “screening in” to “screening out.”

Applicant tracking systems screen out by reading keywords and keyword phrases, incorrect headings, formatting, wording/grammar.  They search for job gaps, look for age clues (I’m sure they wouldn’t admit to that!), compare your tasks and duties to the HR boilerplate job description – they seem to have no limit to the elimination tactics that can be programmed in.

    Liz Ryan is a veteran HR professional and job coach. Her article “How Technology Killed Recruiting” provides a really good, helpful review of ATS technology.

Today, it’s estimated that 80% of corporate recruiting departments use an ATS.

 Companies: 1 – Candidates: 0

– if you are keeping score.  What used to work, and what most job seekers still think works, is a black hole.

Forbes says only 23% who apply will get an interview.  Inc. says only 2.5%.  My coaching clients agree with Inc.  So do I.  Any frustrated job seeker I’ve talked with doesn’t come close to the 23% if they pursue this self-directed, “spray and pray” strategy.

The hidden job market

Permit me to deepen the black hole even further.

Upwards of 75% of real jobs aren’t even posted!  They’re hidden.

What you say? Why?

Maybe the hiring manager isn’t ready to pull the trigger.  Perhaps budget approval is pending. Maybe he/she doesn’t trust his HR group to find the right talent and prefers to work her/his own professional network first.  For sure, he/she doesn’t want to be buried in the off-target resumes the ATS is likely to produce.  Perhaps they need to replace someone and are using a recruiting firm to keep the search confidential. Or maybe the company is posting it internally hoping their internal referral system will kick in.  Or maybe they just don’t have the budget to post it out.

Just know that it’s a big percentage and it’s where the better jobs are – hidden from your view.

So what’s a poor job seeker to do?  Heard enough to know that a mindset shift is in order? No?  Then chew on this – upwards of 80% of jobs are filled through networking, only 10-12% through online postings.

Think about it.  When you apply on line, you are doing what every other lazy, uninformed job seeker is doing.  Those aforementioned job-applications-per-job-posting confirm that.  You have chosen to be part of a very “un-select” group.  Can I say “sheep-like follower” and have you still hang with me?

EGAD!  I have to network?

OK.  Enough already with the problem.  Get me to a solution.

Here it is!  Network your ass off!

Scroll back about four paragraphs.  See that 80% number.  It’s for real.

I know.  You don’t do job fairs and Junior Chamber of Commerce networking events.  Elevator speeches in a noisy room over cheap wine to an equally desperate stranger just isn’t your thing.  That’s OK.  Those events attract the same people that are applying and are continuing to show their naivete and desperation by working these events.

You need to take it up a notch – a big notch.

Picture this:  a group of “talent acquisition” professionals (aka internal, corporate HR recruiters) whose primary job is to kick you into the black hole.  Key understanding here:  when you apply, you land right in the middle of the human resources department.  So what?

HR recruiters have NEVER, NEVER been able to say “yes” to a hire.   But they have ALWAYS, ALWAYS been able to say “NO”.  Just suppose they had a bad hair day – or are buried in resumes and days behind.  Or just plain don’t give a s*#t.  Still like your odds?

Where do you need to be?  With someone who says YES (forgive me for the “duh”).  That would be?  The hiring manager (another “duh” – sorry).  How are you going to reach her/him?  Not through an HR rep of any kind – they go to a special school to learn to lay down their lives to protect the hiring manager from direct contact by a candidate.  How dare you make them look bad!

Summary:

  1. Don’t make HR your starting point by applying. You’ve injected a roadblock on the front end of your search.
  2. Find a direct route to the hiring manager.
  3. Realize and accept the fact that you will eventually have to deal with HR. Remember that they do things like schedule interview times, explain and administer benefits, complete paperwork. They are policy and procedure people – and they are good at it.
  4. So don’t piss them off. At any stage of the process, they can still cut you off at the knees and destroy your progress.  Consider them a necessary part of a successful triumvirate – of you, HR and hiring manager- and treat them with respect and be responsive to the things they need from you in the process.

Where do I start?

It has to start with a success mindset that is tempered with the knowledge that this could be a real slog with the possibility of numerous setbacks and disappointments along the way.  There will be temptations to compromise, to take a “settle for” position.  And that may be necessary in the short term to meet financial needs.  But it needn’t be permanent.

Your success in your job search will be a test of perseverance and will depend on your belief in yourself and your ability to stay with a process i.e. a systematized approach to the activities that will eventually guarantee your success.

An inverted pyramid strategy

One of the ways I have found that removes some of the mystery and angst with my coaching clients and sets them up for success is to view the start in the form of an inverted pyramid with three components:

With my coaching clients, we start from the bottom and work up.  I put the relative importance of each component in that order.  Resume and Linked In Profile are foundational to the most important component – networking.  They must be done well.

Resume

Here’s where I raise the hackles on professional resume writers, some of whom are friends, most all of whom are outstanding at their trade.

The resume is very important.  However, I find that most job seekers inflate its importance. I put it as the least important of the three components for a few simple reasons:

  1. Nobody ever hired anybody off a piece of paper.
  2. An effective job search doesn’t lead with a resume. The resume should follow activities that result in requests for the resume.
  3. Resumes become the most relevant component in a strategy that is limited to applying to posted jobs and/or using third party recruiters.

I’m not a professional resume writer.  I could be – and pick up a few extra Benjamins each month I suppose, but I choose not to.  I leave the choice to the client – shell out $500 to $1,500 for a “Picasso” or work with me and let’s build the resume together to accepted formatting and content standards.

Here’s my strategy with this that has proven successful with coaching clients.

Generally accepted resume formats, or templates, aren’t complicated.  A skilled resume writer is trained to pull out of you the skills, responsibilities and accomplishments in your work history, your educational background and relevant other experiences and wordsmith it into a really pretty doc with boxes/graphs/tables/shaded areas that help justify their fee using semi-advanced word processing composition skills – true “Picassos”.  They are good and earn every penny of what you are willing to cough up.

My position is that you don’t need to spend the money on a Picasso because, if you are conducting an effective networking-based job search, the resume is in a secondary position and not the lead position.

So I help my coaching clients become the author of their own resume which then forces them to dig deep into their past and resurrect the accomplishments that will add power to the resume and, more important, to their stories.  It’s not hard for the two of us together to put it into an acceptable, professional format without having to go to a workshop on Microsoft Word composition or spend half of next month’s mortgage on a Picasso.

Thumbs down on density and responsibilities

I’ve probably seen 10,000 resumes over 16 years and 95% of them were stinkers, even at the exec level.  Why?  Because they almost always focus on responsibilities at the expense of accomplishments.  And invariably they are too dense and try to say too much.

Hey, I get it.  When you are in the “my resume is my salvation” mindset, you are going to want to try to say everything about you in two pages – hence size 8 font and a ton of boring, self-indulgent, inflated, irrelevant information.  And, might I say, almost guaranteed rejection by a busy, fast-moving hiring manager or recruiter.

So that’s where I go with coaching clients and where you should go if you are going to self-direct and write your own document.  Description of responsibilities should be brief and the list of number-based, quantifiable accomplishments should dominate the resume.

Here’s another clue:  recruiters and busy hiring managers like white space.  They abhor size-8 font and pontification.

A serendipity

It’s amazing to witness what this exercise does by taking people deeper into their past and re-discovering the high level of impact they have had but had either forgotten or didn’t feel was significant.

This exercise has a couple of very positive serendipitous effects.  First, by resurrecting and acknowledging forgotten/overlooked accomplishments, a new self-confidence emerges.  That depression, anger and settle-for attitude you brought with you after the groin-kick starts to turn.   Secondly, this exercise plays an amazing role in preparing the seeker for conducting a “knock their socks off” interview.

Summary

To sum up part 3a:

  • The majority of jobs (and the best) are hidden.
  • A “spray-and-pray” strategy is a fool’s journey.
  • Don’t front-end your search with a trip into the HR Department, aka “black hole.”
  • Your resume is very important and it needs to be crisp and concise.  But don’t lead with it.
  • Lists of responsibilities on a resume don’t get hiring manager attention, achievements do.  Emphasize hard-hitting, quantified, problem-solving, attention-getting accomplishments.  Prove that you have had impact.

Next step?  Entry into the social media world.  Nope – not the Facebook world.  The Linked In world – the default platform for getting found as a job seeker.  Next week – Part 3b – why you need Linked In.

 

Leave your thoughts about this part in the comments section below.  Have you had good or bad experiences in your job search leading with your resume?  We’d really like to get your feedback and hopefully learn something new about experiences out there in this ever-evolving job market.