Help wanted: Many boomers face challenges of navigating job market
San Antonio writer offers branding tips to maximize value
Diane Huth sees the baby boomer employment crisis everywhere she goes.
A Philadelphia Uber driver burst into tears because, despite having two master’s degrees and a 16-year career with a leading tech company, she had struggled for two years just to land job interviews.
A friend in California lost her six-figure-salary job and now spends weekends volunteering at a food bank, which she relies on to feed her family. Another friend went from being a senior consumer researcher at one of San Antonio’s most prestigious companies to working as a ranch hand so he’d have a place to live. He finally landed a low-level phone survey job.
All were 55 and older, stuck with the reality that a lot of companies are either overtly or unconsciously prejudiced against an age pool seen as overpriced and out of touch.
“Companies are tossing out their baby boomer employees like yesterday’s newspaper,” Huth says in the introduction of her new book, “Brand You! Reinvent your Career.” “We are being replaced by younger (and cheaper) millennials — relatively recent new college grads who have a fraction of our experience, wisdom, people skills and industry and company history.”
At 68, Huth is far from retired, constantly developing her own brand as a writer, speaker, teacher and career coach. It keeps her active and stimulated, but it also
evolved out of knowing she’s considered too old for the type of marketing jobs she worked in 20 or 30 years ago.
That means writing books and taking to traditional and digital media as a sage on staying employable. She pushes her peers to stay current with the modern workplace, hone in on what they as mature workers have to offer, and act and appear as young and current as possible.
That can mean no gray beards or comb-overs for men, updated makeup and clothing for women. Hiding arthritis and heartburn medications, and instead of talking about “old people” injuries or illnesses, walking briskly and talking about fitness. Communicating with short texts as opposed to lengthy emails. Being open to food trends like kale and sushi.
Most important, it means getting past the perception that older workers are lazy about learning the latest technologies.
“We have absolutely got to embrace technology, and that is the hardest thing, I think, for baby boomers to do,” she said. “We invented the technology. We just have been intimidated by it, and we’ve kind of surrendered it to our kids and grandkids.”
Embracing technology is imperative even at the job search stage. Because recruitment has become highly automated, job seekers often have to learn the tricks of getting their résumés past the computers and in front of a human hiring manager.
She’s helped clients take phrases like “40 years’ experience” out of résumés and encouraged them to work as consultants or seek board positions in cases when they may have more experience than the CEO.
Of late, she’s become an activist against age discrimination, be it by companies slashing high-salary senior staff to bring in cheaper, younger workers or by 20-something frontline hiring managers who can’t imagine someone can be relevant in their 50s, 60s or beyond.
Like many boomers, something happened along the way that ruled out her relaxing at a beachside retirement community at 65. In her case, part of it was two real estate disasters — home-selling attempts that turned into ordeals and net losses rather than the cushion she’d planned for.
Others of the generation, now age 54 to 72, never recovered from the Great Recession’s blow to their retirement accounts. Many lost jobs and were forced to spend down savings during long bouts of unemployment.
During a National Press Foundation seminar on America’s aging workforce, Urban Institute retirement policy program Director Richard Johnson said onefourth of employed 51- to 54-year-olds would end up getting laid off or developing a work-limiting medical condition by 62. The percentages rise dramatically for people of color or without college educations.
Layoffs actually are more common among younger people than older, Johnson said, but an older person will have a much harder time finding a job.
A third of people age 25 to 34 who are let go are still unemployed a year later. For people in their 50s, it’s 47 percent. For those 62 and older, it’s 65 percent.
“There’s a lot of evidence that employers are reluctant to hire older people,” Johnson said. “There’s these concerns about, ‘Well, it’s hard to train older workers. They’re set in their ways. It’s more expensive. They’re not going to be there much longer’ even though retention is just as long as for younger people because younger people change jobs more frequently.”