Getty
People are living and working longer. By 2024, 1 in 4 people in the workplace will be over 55 with many years of working still ahead of them.
During that time, they will face two challenges as job seekers: continuing to cultivate in-demand skills and dealing with age-related biases.
While it’s important to build a business culture that values and reaps the benefits of multigenerational teams, age discrimination continues to be widespread and perverse. In a recent study, 36% of older employees believed that their age had prevented them from getting a job since turning 40.
No matter how old you are today, you need to be planning for your long-term employability.
And if you are a more senior job seeker, you have to avoid these two common mistakes to position yourself for career longevity.
Mistake #1: Not aligning your career story to the jobs of the future
Editor-In-Chief Ramona Schindelheim at Working Nation, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing systematic challenges to employability, notes that the most important thing anyone in the workplace today needs to do is to monitor current hiring trends in their industry or location so that they can focus on constantly reskilling.
This is not easy to do, but it starts with awareness about market trends. If your skills are becoming outdated or you notice that open positions with your current job title are dwindling, your next job search needs to be hyper-focused on acquiring skills in a more marketable area.
The challenge with this strategy is that you may believe you are unqualified for those new jobs. In some cases, that will be true.
However, make sure that you receive an independent assessment from someone knowledgeable about the trends in your field to see where your current experiences may overlap with new technology or where you simply need to start using the correct descriptions for the experience you do have.
For example, you may not be using the popular buzzword “digital” on your résumé today. But there’s a good chance that you already have some digital experience from your current or previous jobs.
According to a study by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, the use of digital skills has increased in 517 of the 545 occupations studied. These job categories represent 90% of all jobs today. The most notable increase was within lower-skilled occupations, where employees might mistakenly believe that their daily use of technology does not count as digital experience.
Take a thorough assessment of when you use digital data to make business decisions and note any software and online applications that helped you engage with customers or get your job done.
Be sure to fully own and state whatever technology experience you do have. This will help your résumé get noticed and also show that you are adaptable to new ways of working.
If you keep running into required skills you simply don’t have, consider making an investment in your long-term employability and seek out online or local training programs to update your skillset.
Mistake #2: Subtly revealing that you haven’t kept up with technology
Whether true or not, your résumé may inadvertently signal that you haven’t kept up with changing technology. Before you start sending it to recruiters and close contacts, check to make sure you are using current conventions.
First, make sure you have a modern email address. Many email domains that were popular in the 1990s and 2000s such as AOL, Hotmail, and EarthLink are now considered outdated and need to be swapped out for a more modern alternative, preferably Gmail. A Gmail account is free to sign up for, fairly easy to set up, and you can add it as an additional email account to your smartphone, while still maintaining your previous address.
Second, pair down your header and contact information to just your name, cellphone and email address. It is now common practice to remove your mailing address entirely and you should also not list a home phone number (a landline), even if you happen to have one.
Third, select a contemporary font for your résumé. Times New Roman will give your résumé a traditional undertone that you may want to avoid. Try instead Arial, Calibri or Georgia; all of these fonts are simple and clean alternatives that can give your résumé a fresh look.
At last, but definitely not least, know that having a LinkedIn profile is no longer optional for job seekers. You have to create a presence there, even if you are a senior executive and don’t plan to apply to jobs directly through the platform. LinkedIn is the place where prospective employers and networking connections will go to learn more about you.
There are many articles online about how to present your personal brand on LinkedIn. But at a minimum, you have to be searchable there, have a professional profile picture along with details for your most recent jobs and be active in sending connection requests to anyone you may have lost touch with.
Take the time to send requests and get connected with as many of your old contacts as possible. Don’t be shy about reaching out to people you haven’t spoken to in years. There is a low bar of relationship that warrants a LinkedIn request. If the person genuinely knows you and will recognize your name, get connected.
Like all the other tips listed above, a larger LinkedIn network subtly signals that you’ve keep current with career and hiring norms.
Job searches get harder as you age. This is an unfortunate reality and one that will hopefully be changing in the future. Nonprofits such as Milken Institute’s Business of Aging program are working to reduce barriers to advancing your career later in life. They recognize the value of older workers to drive economic growth.
Do your part by avoiding these mistakes and staying positive. The future of work needs your contribution.
Kourtney Whitehead is a career expert and author of Working Whole. You can learn more about her work at Simply Service.
