- Older employees are set in their ways and full of preconceived notions. It is better to hire a younger person, preferably, a graduate, whom we can train from scratch in our own ways of doing things.
- Younger people are hungrier. They have more ambition and energy.
- Older people are not up to date technically.
- Younger employees have fewer commitments outside work, so they are more willing to work late and at weekends.
- Older people are more likely to have health problems.
- Younger people do not have to be paid such high salaries.
- Older people cost more in terms of pension contributions.
This is, of course, a completely biased picture. Not only do these arguments totally ignore the pluses of older employees but at least some of them are pure prejudices which are by no stretch of the imagination true of all older executives. Nevertheless, since people who have raised objections never listen to any other arguments until their own have been acknowledged, addressed and properly answered, that is precisely what you must do if you really want another job. But, come to think of it, do you? And, if so, why?
Do You Need Another Job?
No, it is not really such a silly question. Do you want a job or just a source of income? And, if it is only a source of income that you want, how much do you actually need? Are the children now off your hands? Have years of inflation reduced the real cost of your mortgage to a fraction of its original burden? Or have you even paid it off completely? What about capital? Have you accumulated a tidy sum in savings? Have you inherited money from your parents? What sort of income stream could your capital be turned into?
Sit down and work out the figures. Calculate your annual expenditure, add a bit for contingencies, then gross it up to arrive at the total income you need, before tax and other deductions, to cover your outgoings. How does that compare with what you are actually earning? Could you live quite comfortably on significantly less?
If so, ask yourself some more questions. Do you really want:
- The hassle of fighting your way to and from work every day at the mercy of traffic jams or unreliable, overcrowded trains?
- The strain of having to be continually struggling to keep up to date in a world in which the pace of change is ever faster?
- Your family and social life taking second place to the 'lunch is for wimps' philosophy of the modern executive rat race?
An increasing number of executives are taking one or other of these paths and, as a result, vastly improving their quality of life. Some develop portfolio careers, enjoying a varied and stimulating lifestyle by using two or three or even more of the different skill and experience sets they have acquired over the years. Others reduce the amount of time they work, thus avoiding the classic retirement problem of dropping overnight from a (more than) full-time job to suddenly doing nothing at all. The time they free up can be used for voluntary work, extra holidays or a variety of leisure pursuits.
It is not everyone, of course, who is lucky enough to be able to follow such a path, and readers who cannot afford to take any significant drop at all in their incomes may wish to skip this article... On the other hand, the number of people who can afford to consider alternatives to full-time employment these days is surprisingly large, and the following stories demonstrate why they would be wise to give serious thought to the possibilities open to them.
Alan's Story
Alan could have retired earlier. His wife, who was nearly ten years younger than himself, had a part-time secretarial job and their only child, now in her late 20s, was happily married to a man with a successful career and no financial worries. Alan, nevertheless, plodded on until his firm's official retirement age of 60, commuting up to central London every day and working under increasing pressure as his employer's business became more and more competitive.
He had looked forward to the opportunities retirement would provide to play golf and take extra holidays with his wife who, being employed within the education sector, had always been entitled to much more annual leave than he had. Alan enjoyed just over a year of that golden retirement. Shortly after his 61st birthday, he died of a heart attack.
He could have retired at least five years earlier - which might have meant rather more than five extra years of retirement, for his wife is convinced that it was those last few years, during his late 50s, struggling to keep up with the increasing pace of his Job and enduring the daily hassle of London commuter trains, which took such a heavy toll.
Colin's Story
Another man who had left things too late, but in a rather different way, was Colin. Only just coming up to 50, he was a highly successful company director, with earnings comfortably into six figures. He was also very angry. In fact, his knuckles were white as, in the course of a career counseling session, he explained why.
'Every time there's been some important event in my family's life,' he bellowed, 'that *** company has sent me off on an overseas trip at the last minute. Do you realize,' he continued, his knuckles growing whiter still, 'that both my kids are grown up now and I've never managed to get to a single *** sports day.'
The final crunch had come when yet another business trip meant that he was in some remote Eastern European city on his 25th wedding anniversary. It was as a penance for missing that important date that he had, somewhat reluctantly, acceded to his wife's demand that he should talk to someone about the whole question of his career and its impact on the rest of his life.
Colin did not need nearly as much money as he was earning. He never had the time to spend it and his wife was as far from a keeping up with the Joneses type as you could ever find. On the other hand, he was far too young and energetic to be ready to join the pipe and slippers brigade.
Fortunately Colin's story has a happier ending. Through a networking contact, Colin met and went into partnership with a semi-retired professional man who shared his passion for classic sports cars, and had gone into the business of restoring and selling them. He needed extra capital to expand and also wanted someone whose commercial skills complemented his own to share the managerial workload. As it happened, the company's premises were only 12 miles from Colin's home. His wife has already booked a weekend at a rather exclusive country hotel for their next anniversary.
Devil's Advocate
Not everyone, of course, is as well off as Colin and, even if they were, it would be important to sound a few warnings at this point. To begin with, when you do your sums, you obviously need to consider not only the position right now, but also the implications for ultimate retirement. While your expenditure may not alter too much, additional retirement outgoings on leisure activities and holidays usually broadly being balanced by savings on business clothing and travel to and from the office, you will have to think about things that have up until now been paid for by your company, like medical insurance, life cover and, most significantly for many people, your car.
An even more important factor is, naturally, your pension. This is not only a crucial area but also a complex one in which no two people's circumstances are exactly the same. It is therefore vital that you take expert advice.
What is perhaps less obvious, and this is where the devil's advocacy comes in, is that while many executives these days will tell you that their life has been transformed by the decision to move out of full-time employment into self-employment, part-time work or whatever, this is not for everyone. Some people, used to the structure and social contacts inherent in employment, find working on their own lonely and demoralizing. Others have difficulty with the need to go out and sell their services which self-employment usually involves. Given that, once a mature person has been out of normal employment for a while, it is extremely difficult to get back in; you need to think twice before you burn your boats.
This is even more important when you are thinking of investing part or all of your capital, which you may need to generate an income stream in retirement, in a business venture. While some options, like becoming a self-employed consultant, involve only a relatively small outlay, others call for a great deal more. That pub in the country you always dreamed of running, or the purchase of a franchise, could involve a significant investment --and one which it may not be easy to recover if things do not go as planned. Time and again, business executives pump their redundancy money or savings into such ventures only to find, after a relatively short period, that they have made a mistake. Running a pub, for example, means working all hours, and can soon become terribly repetitive and boring to someone who has been used to the challenge and stimulation of a senior managerial job in industry or commerce.
Anyone considering opting out of corporate life and going into self-employment really should consider investing a few hundred pounds in the service provided by the career guidance companies. If you are thinking of investing any substantial sum in a business of your own, it is absolutely essential.
It should also be mentioned that, if you do decide that self-employment is right for you, there are all sorts of other things you need to think about. Should you form a limited company or operate as a sole trader? How much capital will you need? What kinds of insurance? What about your Income tax and national insurance position? Who is going to do your accounts? In fact, you need to get yourself a whole book on the subject.
Not for Bread Alone
But now the time has come to return to the subject of being employed and to take a look at some of the other things, apart from a source of income that people get out of working for a business organization. Consider how much importance you place on:
- the stimulation you get from a Job;
- the structure it gives your life;
- social contact with your colleagues;
- the change of scene involved in spending part of your time somewhere other than the place where you live;
- the challenge provided by your level of responsibility;
- the social respectability inherent in being employed compared with the perceived stigma of being unemployed;
- the status of your position;
- the executive car and other perks;
- meeting new/different people -- clients and other business contacts;
- opportunities for business travel;
- social activities associated with the Job;
- being appreciated;
- belonging.
Being Honest
Take another look at the reasons given at the beginning of this article for employers being unwilling to hire older people. Ignoring the cost considerations, which probably have more than a grain of truth in them and can only be answered in terms of value for money, take a look at the other arguments. Now, be honest. Are you:
- Open minded?
- Flexible?
- Hungry?
- Ambitious?
- Energetic?
- Willing to work long hours at the expense of your family and social life?
To illustrate the point, meet Norman. You can spot him a mile off by the enormous chip on his shoulder. Although he is only in his early 40s, Norman attributes all his problems to his age. Until 18 months ago, he held a demanding and very responsible job, managing over 100 staff. Then his employers were taken over by an American company. Norman's version of what happened next is that the Yanks wanted to change everything just for the sake of it and fired everyone who would not go along with their daft new ideas, especially anyone over the age of 40.
If you could hear the other side of the story, you would discover that the British company had become uncompetitive due to its failure, in a fast-moving distribution business, to keep up with modern developments. The Americans had tried to get existing managers and staff to adapt to their more efficient ways of doing things, and some had responded enthusiastically, glad to see a way of keeping the company, and their jobs, viable. There had, however, been resistance from other managers with a 'We've always done it this way' attitude. In order to avoid jeopardizing the prospects for the company as a whole, it had unfortunately been necessary to lay off a handful of stick-in-the-muds.
Norman, with his inflexible attitude, his open criticism of his former employers, his increasingly depressed approach and that enormous chip on his shoulder, has still not found another job. In desperation, he has even applied, being the possessor of an HGV license, for a job as a lorry driver. He was told that he was over qualified. The chip has grown even larger.
In this case, the prejudices were justified -- but what about the many, many cases when they are not? What can genuinely positive and adaptable senior managers do to combat the attitude of potential employers who consider them to be past their sell by date? Read on for James's story.
What Sell by Date?
James had worked for some years as the office manager/ accountant of a family-owned company operating as sub-contractors in the construction industry. The company had two locations, the one at which he was employed, near to his home in Ealing, West London, and another in South East London, which he had to visit once or twice a month. When times became difficult, in the early 1990s, economies had to be made, and it was decided to shut one location down and concentrate all of the activities at the other. Unfortunately, in a difficult property market, Ealing proved to be the more saleable and James's job moved to South East London.
Unwilling to disrupt his children's education and his wife's social life by moving home, James began to drive to and from his new office each day. It was a terrible journey, taking an hour and a half each way. On top of that, James was working longer hours, in order to help the firm through a tough patch. Not wishing either to spend so much time travelling every day, or to leave the firm, James - now in his mid 40s - hit on an original solution. He bought a motor bike. Weaving in and out of the traffic on his two wheels, he reduced the journey time to an acceptable 50 minutes each way.
In spite of the fact that he was still spending much more time both at work, and getting to and from it, than he had previously done, James began to attend evening classes. The reason for this was that his two teenage lads had become computer buffs and James was determined not to be left behind. Within a year he had become a real wizard at spreadsheets, as well as quite a dab hand at computer chess.
Three years later a main contractor went bust, owing James's firm a sum which represented nearly 30 per cent of its total debtors. After a fraught few weeks, the bank pulled the rug out from under James's employers and, now knocking 50, he was on the streets.
Realizing that getting a new job through advertisements was an only marginally better bet than winning the jackpot on the National Lottery, he hit the telephone - after, that is, he had analyzed what he had to offer and who was likely to buy it. In his networking, he concentrated on getting leads into smaller companies. The rationale for this was twofold. First, by keeping up to date with what was going on in the world of business, he knew that the smaller companies are creating most of the jobs these days. Second, he realized that smaller concerns frequently cannot offer promotion prospects and might therefore prefer an older candidate who would stay with them for ten years or more to a younger person who might just use them as a stepping stone.
Although the construction industry was pretty dead, he homed in on related sectors which might be livelier and, after two or three months, was put in touch with the senior partner of a firm of architects in North London. The practice was growing and the partners wanted to concentrate on fee earning. In order to do this, they needed to divest themselves of the administration side of the business. They were considering advertising for someone to run the back office but were not sure whether they could attract an individual, who could not only handle the wide range of duties involved and win the trust of the partners, but who would also be affordable and who would stay with them for a reasonable length of time.
What was intended to be a brief, exploratory meeting between James and the senior partner turned into a session which lasted the whole afternoon. He was then invited back to meet the other three partners. They were all highly impressed by the way he proved that:
- he had a flexible approach and was not at all set in his ways;
- he was still hungry, with bags of ambition and energy;
- he had kept up to date technically, making the effort to go to evening classes to turn himself into an IT (information technology) wizard;
- he was not a 9 to 5 man. As his previous record demonstrated;
- he would accept a salary on a par with candidates in their 30s or early 40s;
- since he could not be admitted to the partners' pension scheme, and they had no scheme for the few other staff they employed, he was willing to pay for his own personal pension.
- reliability;
- the maturity required to gain acceptance by the partners;
- a solution to the problem of there being nowhere to go within the firm.
This, of course, goes to show that you can still get a job, if that is what you really want, in spite of your age - provided that you can show how to solve an organization's problems and add value to the business. Getting it through an advertised vacancy may be rather a long shot, since many job ads quote upper age limits and recruiters use these as one of the easiest ways of reducing several hundred replies down to manageable proportions. The older you get, the more important it becomes to concentrate on the hidden approaches.
"You have to appoint yourself manager of your own job hunting campaign."
