You have to face facts that there are some things you can’t control
Job seeking when you’re over age 50 certainly has its challenges. This is especially true if you haven’t looked for a job in more than a decade.
Sitting high atop the reasons why this might be the greatest challenge of your adult life is that great bugaboo – age discrimination. It’s been more than 50 years since Congress outlawed job discrimination based on age, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Ageism is real and it’s not going away
Not only does it exist, by some measurements it’s running quite strong. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about workplace ageism is that, probably moreso than any other form of discrimination, age discrmination is legally very difficult to prove.
That leaves many 50+ job seekers feeling trapped. They know that there are jobs out there for which they are qualified and that they are convinced they could do – and do well. But yet, at the end of the day, they are passed over.
“Grrrrrrrrrr,” said the 50+ job seeker.
With little likelihood that they will ever be reprimanded even in the slightest, employers who are practicing ageism in their hiring are not likely to stop. And there isn’t a whole lot any individual job seeker can do about it.
This is where you need to be a bit of a control freak. That is, control the things that you can and don’t sweat the things that you can’t. If that company is going to disqualify you because of your age, move on. After all, do you really want to work at a company that views/treats its employees in such a manner?
We didn’t think so either.
So why not focus your energies on those things that you can control? Target companies that are open to hiring older applicants – and they are out there. And they are not as infrequent as you might think.
Drill your wells where the water is. You can control that.
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