Get a Job in Your Sixties Plus
Over 60 and unemployed? Want (or need) to work? Here are some tips that might help you.
Contents
Steps
Keeping current
- Stay fit. Do pushups. Get some weights and use them during the day. Do crunches. Walk, jog, bike, or cycle. Play recreational sports.
- Practice your skills at home. If you are a technical writer, author pages for wikiHow! Learn (or improve) your programming skills. Volunteer and do a newsletter (and develop your desktop publishing skills).
- Be knowledgeable about what is happening in the world. Watch the news, read the papers and have an opinion that is well-informed about things happening in your area.
Highlighting the value of maturity
- Emphasize your maturity, life skills, humility, experiences, or anything else you have to offer, that younger workers cannot.
- Apply for jobs where maturity is valued. Jobs as trainers, social assistance positions, jobs in libraries or other places where knowledge, information, and life experience works in your favour. Teacher aide jobs pay nearly as well as registered beginning teachers, but do not require the qualifications, effort, or hours required of qualified teachers.
- Include anything in your resume that might give you an advantage over the 30-something whippersnappers! Have you worked with people of different cultures, learned some relevant computer software, or won an athletics competition recently? Have you published an article that's available on line? Dig, dig, and dig some more.
- Look for ways to leverage your past experience into new jobs. For example, if you are you a former computer programmer with obsolete coding skills, document the analysis (or the documentation chores) that you did in prior years, and apply for Business Analyst (or, Technical Writer) positions.
- Show what you have done. A range of skills shows flexibility. Have you learned a language, made a film and posted it on YouTube, or take a rafting trip?
Networking
- Network. Join a church. Talk to people at the library. Go to the gym and make friends (as well as stay fit). Stay in touch with old friends and old workmates. Volunteer. Take classes (especially in your field). Let everyone you meet know that you're between jobs!
Interviewing for jobs
- Go to every interview you are offered, even if the commute is impossible, the job isn't what you really want, or the pay is too low. The experience of the interview itself, may well help you later during an interview for a job you really do want. And, you never know what might eventuate at the interview.
- Work on making a good first impression. You may not get that job in the first five seconds, but, you surely can lose it! Clothes in a current style. Hair cut, and dyed if needed (but, carefully, and, no comb-overs or 50's page-boys!) A firm handshake. Look them in the eye and SMILE.
- Don't drop tips that emphasize your age. Don't brag about your grandchildren, or mention how many years it's been since you graduated from high school. Emphasize what you've been doing the last 10 or 20 years, no need to go any further back. Omit the year you graduated (unless you have a recent degree).
Persevering
- Don't give up! It only takes one "yes" for you to have a job.
- Think outside of the box. Bypass the whole job thing and start a business instead. For example, start up a company for over sixties as workers. There is a big and growing market selling to over 60s too.
- Form associations with other over sixties. Remember that in the US, the over 55s have 70 percent of the wealth. So you do have a little power.
Tips
- Learn something new every day. Remain enthusiastic, remembering the work you used to do. Share your thought on Facebook, Twitter etc. Keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues.
- Do as much work as possible. Walk, exercise and do some constructive work like gardening, stitching teaching and helping the less privileged people.
Warnings
- Don't be put off by media, newspapers, TV, etc. negativity. Most of this comment comes from younger folk anyway.
