Self-employment?
Once you get beyond a certain age, you pretty much become unemployable. My cousin is a well-educated and qualified chap but when he returned from Saudi at the age of (gasp) over 40, he found it really hard to get a job.
I've also known for years that I'm unemployable now (very weird and not very believable CV) so I set up my own company. It's all very well suggesting retraining and the likes but no one wants to hire an oldie. "Keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved."
Self employment in an online business may be the only route out and the barriers to entry are quite low. The competition is fierce and there's no magic bullet to help you get rich quick. If you have the determination to persevere and work at it, you can be successful though. And it can be a lot of fun.
If you're stuck in a rut, or feeling vulnerable because of the current economic situation, I would suggest trying to go it alone. Start small, be ethical, plug away at it - and you just might make it!
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It's a tough one isn't it. I've read recently that younger people tend to have broad but shallow pools of knowledge, whereas older people tend to have deeper, narrower knowledge.
Which is great if used correctly. The problem so often is that because older people have developed a way of working over the years that has worked for them, if the circumstances then demand a different way of working it can become really, really difficult to change that way of working.
That's the obstacle for me and it's an important one because as companies and as a nation we can't put people onto the scrap heap once they reach a certain age. There's a whole lot of knowledge out there. Companies have invested a lot of time in understanding generation X and the different way they work. Maybe similar effort is required with baby boomers?
It's interesting that you should raise the issue of depth versus breadth of knowledge or experience. I said something similar on another thread here in relation to formal education (depth) rather than informal learning (breadth).
No, we can't and shouldn't put people on the scrap heap because they're old, fat, short or whatever. (I believe there is evidence to suggest that tall people are more successful at interviews.) But it's a fact of life that interviews are done by humans and therefore influenced by all the value judgements of the interviewer(s).
I've not had a proper job for years now, but in ye olden days when I was in the market for employment, since the early 1980s I never got a job I applied for, and equally I never applied for any job I got. People would just phone me up and tell me what they wanted me to do. I was incredibly successful at getting sent to the places I least wanted to go. :-)
This all raises two main issue for me. First, how can managers make the interview process less flawed? And second, is it worth the effort since so many jobs aren't offered to the public anyway but instead given to a person selected by the decision maker as being the right person for the job?
I would imagine that I'd be considered fairly unemployable nowadays. I did a few odd jobs back in my student years but since then I've always be self-employed. I don't regret it for one moment and would probably never seek to be employed by someone else now, but at the same I think it's likely that I wouldn't be wanted either! :)
Paul
Oh, and I completely agree that the online world is a great one to get into if you persevere. There are countless opportunities and you really can make money if you put your mind to it. There is no get-rich-quick scheme (well, there's lots... but none that you should entertain!) but hard work and perseverance does eventually bring its rewards.
Paul