Hey guys, welcome back.
If you are new here, my name is bill Benoist.
I'm a certified professional career coach in Silicon Valley.
Have you heard that old saying it's attitude not age.
Well, in today's video I want to talk about older workers in career transition because
a lot of times they're carrying the wrong attitude and let me explain.
You have a 25 year old and that individuals sends out a hundred resumes and to hear nothing
but crickets.
Maybe they'll get a couple of rejection letters and what do they think?
Well, they think that this is a difficult job market or maybe my resume is not presenting
me in the right light.
Maybe I'm applying to the wrong jobs.
Maybe there's something wrong with the formatting that it's not getting to the hiring manager's
desk, but then you have the 55 year old who sends out the same number of resumes and gets
the same number of rejections or here's nothing but crickets and what did they think?
They immediately blamed their age.
And this is a really kind of a bad thing to be doing because when you do this, then all
sudden you start creating this helplessness, you know, well, there is no magic pill of
going back in the age.
So I'm just going to have to live with this.
And because I'm just growing older by the minute, I'm probably never going to, um, find
a job out there or one that paid as much as I got before.
And there's just the whole hot in negative self talk.
In fact, there's so many voices going on in their head right now.
They could probably take the carpool line.
That's how bad it gets.
So let's just take a look at this.
You know, let's dive down and examine this.
Well, first off, the only evidence that you have in any of this right now is your resume
is your resume showing your age.
I mean, there are definitely steps that you can take.
So your resume does not show your age.
For example, you don't need to go back more than 10, definitely no more than 15 years
on your resume.
Um, in dates.
So if you have dates on your Oh colleges remove those.
If you have older companies that are still relevant but they were, you know, more than
15 years ago, put those under additional work experience.
Hopefully you're not using something that's old that's not used anymore, like a job objective,
but you got something a little bit more up to date called a, uh, professional summary,
um, references available on request at the end of the resume using, um, what I would
say, any kind of terminology that could really date yourself like a CRT, there's a lot of
different ways that you can disguise your resume so it doesn't your age.
So now can you really blame your age that um, because you're hearing nothing but crickets.
No, of course not.
So there, something else is going on.
So now all of a sudden we're having a shift with your mindset.
You know, there was a study that was done a few years ago where they pulled hiring managers
and HR professionals and asked him and said, what is your number one perception of the
older worker?
And I think they gave five.
There was with the one that Rose to the very top was that the older worker would not have
the driver energy to, um, do the job.
And then there was the older worker would, um, not be, uh, open to being managed by a
younger worker.
The older worker would not be open to change.
The older worker would not be open to learning new things, going to training, and the older
worker would be subject or prone to more illnesses.
So these were the top five.
There was many of them.
But these top five were the ones that, uh, Rose to the top.
Well, you know what, only one of those five, only one of them was even able to be validated
when they went back and they asked, um, the hiring managers and the HR people about the
older workers that they had working for them.
And you know what the only one was that they validated it was the older worker would not
be open to learning new things or going to training.
So now we're back to the resume because this when you can actually address in your resume
and Nat is um, you know, a consistent, uh, desire to learn new things.
And you can put this, um, towards the bottom of the Euro resume, uh, certifications that
you've pulled out there.
And there's a lot of ways to um, learn new applications, new programs, get certifications,
LinkedIn learning, uh, Coursera, you to me a you, Udacity, just to name a few.
So you go through there, take a course, put the course name down and put a date down and
right off the bat, you know, without even showing your age, you are showing that you're
certainly learning new things out there.
But let's just take that first, first item.
Uh, the first perception, the older worker is not going to have the driver desire to
not drive, desire the driver energy to do the position.
So you're an older worker and you walk into the interview and you are walking in feeling
confident and you're feeling energized and your shoulders are back and you got that eye
contact.
My God.
I mean you've just put that one perception of rest right off the bat.
And let me tell you, and I'm sure many hiring managers out there could um, attest this as
well.
I knew people that were in their thirties and forties that they would come to work and
they didn't seem to have the driver energy to do that to position.
And then I've known a lot of people in their mid sixties and even early seventies that,
um, definitely show the drive and energy to do the position.
So again, it's a perception, it's a perception that you view by into on the negative side.
It can really hurt you.
So with that, I just want you to consider the holding the wrong mindset.
How much of an obstacle that can be going into an interview, a carrying that baggage.
Because no matter how well you try to hide that baggage, if you believe that your age
is going to be that detrimental in finding you in the next position where you know what,
it's going to be really super difficult to hide that perception from the hiring manager
and immediately what they're going to say is a lot of this thinking about not, not saying
it out loud, this individual is probably not going to have the, uh, the energy or the drive
to do the position.
So let's just finish this interview and move on to the next applicant.
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