By Edward J. Joyce, Life Senior Member, former software engineering manager, now retired
One fine spring day, I went into a 9:00 AM meeting at my company with a senior vice president whom I had neither met nor spoken to previously. I expected a reorganization announcement, something I had seen routinely during my 22 years with the company. By 9:02, the VP unceremoniously fired me from my position as software engineering manager. I got caught up in a rebalancing plan, the company’s official terminology for laying off 1800 employees over the course of a year.
It wasn’t a complete surprise. The company had been contracting more than expanding. I somehow managed to dodge the termination-notice bullets for the last five years. This time, my number was up, and at age 62, I was involuntarily unemployed for the first time in my life. I took a deep breath—or maybe five or six breaths—and told myself, “You can do this,” and immediately launched a job search campaign. My mind set aside thoughts of my daughter’s pending graduation from college, a three-week summer vacation abroad that had already been booked and paid for, and a new bicycle to replace my aging road bike. Instead, resume updates, job interviews, and lining up references became nearly all-encompassing.
Without a doubt, it would be an uphill climb. Under federal law, it is unlawful to discriminate against a person because of age when hiring. Yet “Age discrimination is everywhere,” according to Forbes magazine, and I had heard the same from more than a few colleagues. On the flip side, I was well-positioned to weather even an extended job search. I had more than six months of severance pay from my former company. My healthcare insurance was covered through my wife’s employer. The mortgage, as well as my daughter’s college tuition, were paid off.
To highlight the key steps in this journey of unemployment and re-employment, I have compiled a list of 6 strategies that will serve you well should you find yourself in the same situation:
Your job is finding a job.
Make the job search your top priority by committing eight hours a day, five days a week, to finding employment. For example, I started my job search in earnest the next day, waking at 5:00 AM following my usual work routine. I maintained that schedule throughout the job search campaign, working faithfully eight hours a day while seeking employment. As eager as I was to begin emailing job applications, I first had some important prep work to complete—a career transition program.
Consult career placement services and resume review workshops.
Navigate your browser to placement services to hone your job search plan and construct an ageless resume. With the exception of the severance package, the career transition program, sometimes called a placement service, was the most valuable benefit provided by my former employer. Right Management, a subsidiary of ManpowerGroup, conducted a webinar covering job search strategies, including marketing yourself, networking, and interviewing. The webinar came with a trove of reference material for downloading. Of particular interest to me was “Making the Most of Maturity in Your Search.”
Right Management also ran a resume workshop during which my resume, as well as the resumes of a dozen others in ‘career transition,’ were reviewed and evaluated by a certified Career Development Facilitator.
I learned how to make my resume ageless by:
- removing work experience beyond 15 years ago (those experiences are usually irrelevant to the position you’re applying for);
- omitting college graduation dates (they can instantly identify your age);
- and conveying energy through action verbs like completed, directed, and simplified (the workshop guide listed 150 others).
In addition to career placement services, many state governments offer free career resources (for example, Virginia provides https://virginiacareerworks.com, and Massachusetts provides https://www.mass.gov/masshire-career-centers-for-jobseekers).
Join LinkedIn.
With a fresh perspective on the job market and a new resume in hand, I revved up my professional network. According to Right Management, 90% of companies use LinkedIn for recruiting, and the odds of securing an interview by responding to traditional online postings are in the range of 1:200 to 1:1500. I can attest to these figures from personal experience. During a telephone interview with a recruiter from a Fortune 200 bank, I asked how many applicants applied for the position, in this case, a technical manager. He struck a few keys on his computer and replied nonchalantly, “147.”
LinkedIn became a fixture on my computer screen. If I saw a software position posted by Acme Corp., for example, I would search LinkedIn for people in my network who were employed at Acme or connected to people employed there. More often than not, the connections were 2nd or 3rd degree, which means someone I knew was acquainted with someone at Acme. The secondary connections would be hard-pressed to endorse my skills since they may have never even met me. They were still useful for providing introductions with notes such as “A friend whose judgment I trust recommended Edward. I expect he could quickly become a valuable contributor to Acme. His resume is attached.”
Attend Meetups, conferences, association meetings, and professional gatherings.
These events are where you meet people who can offer advice and job leads. Strategic networking in this fashion can get your foot into employer doors you previously found locked and barred.
Respond promptly to staffing agency recruiters.
Commission-driven recruiters, also known as headhunters, body snatchers, and flesh peddlers, are driven by greed, but who isn’t to a degree? When a recruiter calls or emails you, respond promptly. Otherwise, your name will be passed over for the next one on the recruiter’s prospect list.
Take feedback from every interaction with prospective employers.
Ask the human resources representative:
- How many applicants are there, including internal candidates?
- How many positions are you looking to fill?
- Are the positions open due to expansion or attrition?
If you were not offered the position, ask for constructive feedback. These answers and responses can give you insight into employer hiring processes and a keen look at who you are competing with for the job.
In the end, there was one other strategy that led to success in my job hunt: persistence. By the numbers, it was: 7 ½ months, 100 applications, 42 phone screens, 18 in-person interviews. Add these figures together, and the result, in my case, summed to that elusive variable EMPLOYED!
