Too Old for the Job


Dream Job
Dorothy is a job seeker who emailed me with a question about his job search. He is 54 years old. He has an undergraduate degree in computer science and a master’s degree in software engineering. He sent his resume to lots of employers, but he hasn’t got any responses. He wants to know, could age be the problem. Dorothy I really do not know, if age is a problem in your case. But I can help you figure it out or at least I can point you in the right direction. The place to start first is inside your personal network, those people who you know personally and professionally who can help give you some hints. Ask them what they think and based on their information in your industry and the level of employment you are seeking. In other words managers might be a little older on average compared to entry level workers. That would be the first place to start.

Second, you can go online and ask some questions there. Join a professional networking organization such as LinkedIn.com where you could email people in your field, even if you don’t know them or you could ask a question online there, where professionals will answer or you could do a search by keywords for instance put in engineering the industry in which you work such as medical or IT or multimedia or whatever the field is you are trying to get into. Look at those profiles and see if you can figure out what the average age is among all those people you are going to find and trust me, you are going to find a lot.

Job Offer

The last place where you could look that I can think of is that you can find some blogs about the profession and again the level of employment and the industry that you want to get into. On that blog ask the question and present your problem and see what other people have to say. Dorothy this is not going to be a quick answer but with some time and some digging you’ll find out what’s the average age. Perhaps age is the issue and in which case you can make some adjustments in the dates at your resume. I have lots of advice for that on my website. But may what you’ll find out, that it’s not your age at all and you just need to keep plugging. Good luck with this.

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