The Digital Job Market & The Mature Worker

I am in a few networking groups that I am active with. A couple are professional, one, in particular, is specifically for those of us searching for employment, and the other is one that people may have other barriers to finding employment, aside from just needing one. Other groups I belong to are social, some specifically just to connect casually, others are for social causes.

One main theme I seem to run into is the fact that a large number of us who are searching for meaningful and gainful employment is that we are who are considered to be "the mature worker". The majority of the people in the professional job seeking network group are probably over 40. Each and every single one of these participants are awesome people, who have so many positive talents to share with their potential employers. Here is a short list:

• Experience & Knowledge
• Wisdom & Insight
• Dedication to what they do
• Willing and able to get the job done

While it may seem as if those of us who are "slightly older" may come across as not being as up-to-date on our technical skills, I'd have to say that with the people in my networking group, this is a false assumption. All of us have the technical skills needed to get the jobs done, and if there is a program to be learned, the basis to learn that program is already built in, being ready to learn. The supposition that older workers will take longer to learn new things would also be something to forget about, also. So many of us are at a place in life where personal enrichment and growth is important to us, so we are open to learning new information.

Yet, it seems as if everywhere I look, the number of older workers in need of finding employment is higher than the younger job seekers. Don't get me wrong, I am very glad that our younger people in their 20s and 30s are getting hired. That is excellent! The difficult thing is, according to some studies, ageism does exist to a point. Here is an article talking about how some online job boards have ageism built right into their site:

https://www.npr.org/2017/03/28/521771515/older-workers-find-age-discrimination-built-right-into-some-job-sites

Another thing that seems to work against us, is the fact that so many have been at a position for the last 20 years or longer, and what used to happen in person with pen and paper is now done online, where e-bots chop up your resume. While I understand that this saves a lot of time for employers, robots cannot understand personality, and often, these robots do not understand the verbal nuances properly in a resume. It is not easy to change direction in this manner since so many things have changed, yet, each and every single one of the people I've talked to has updated their computer skills, learned to create professional profiles on job boards, LinkedIn, and sign up for the alerts to get the proper job notifications, and still goes in, to regularly test their skills to ensure that their office and computer savvy is intact. Even with this, so many are not getting the interviews, and when getting the interviews, don't get the job.

For example, I have education for medical unit clerk and experience as a nursing assistant. The robots will send me job alerts for medical assistant. While both words are on my resume, I am not qualified to be a medical assistant, so these alerts are pretty useless for me. This where it would help, if an actual person was looking at my resume, but, for whatever reason, if the e-bot kicks out my resume because it thinks I am a medical assistant, not a unit secretary, my application and resume never got to the correct people.

Myself, personally, I have decided to back off from the healthcare field, since my original passion is all about people and diversity. I love working with people from different cultures, and with governmental type agencies. It is why I pursued an International Relations degree, along with Political Science. While this may seem as it would "over qualify me" as an administrative assistant or office manager, I actually see this as a piece of marketable education, because this helped me get to know those from not just fellow natural born Americans whose native language is English, but those who are naturalized, permanent/long-term residents, and not all of them are native English speakers, and often, American English is their 3rd or 4th language. It has helped me understand the different word choices that other people may use, and able to understand the reference or nuance of why they chose that word rather than another one.

Back on track... Many older workers have taken classes casually or have read books, articles, and more about various interests, and because we tend to understand what we want, we are willing to explore the different topics to research on our own, making us candidates of broader talents to bring to a company. Even with that, when I look into applying for an office manager position, say with a shipping company, they want someone who has had 5 years office experience with another shipping company or warehouse, or preferably a combination of both. Same with the job description with working in an energy company. They want someone who understands the industry. I understand, although so many of us are willing to learn, and it's another welcoming challenge to learn this industry.

It would also be nice, if on the other hand, if these online job boards could allow one to narrow the search, so say if someone is looking to work in Human Resources, rather than sending just anything, if the individual could target the industry they want, that would make it better for everyone, also. This way, the employer also gets the idea that this person wants to work in that type of field, though I might be asking too much.

Another suggestion also is to better target the types of jobs, because often, the titles are becoming more fluid. For example, when dealing with IT, Engineering, Architecture, and Construction, so many of the terms used to describe the job title overlap, it's difficult to sort through some of these jobs. So a System Architect would not be looking for someone who designs buildings. As a person who tries to help other people find their forever jobs while searching for mine, this gets to be a trying task, since I would have to dig into the details that I may not quite understand, not being an IT or an Architect.

A suggestion to potential employers looking at those of us who are on the more mature end to hire... Just remember, many of us have children in college or grandchildren we'd like to help. We are smarter than we appear and more able than that. We show up, with the attitude to get the job done, no matter what. My personal approach is to make my supervisor or boss look like a genius and to take care of the problems before it gets to the big desk. It is also our mission, as a more mature adult, to handle the situations that come up, and be professional, courteous, and go above the call of duty.

I'd really love to work with our Native people in any setting, whether it's a liaison between Tribal and State governments, or to help international students succeed in school somehow, since I also have experience in social services and education, although if the right opportunity comes up in a different industry, I would LOVE to take that challenge to explore a new venture. Sometimes, you don't know what you want until you find it, and I hope that our 40+ workers start finding our careers because we are at a place in life where we do not want to job hop. I know I will be happy to land that position, and I think many of my fellow mature job seekers feel the same.