Career Advices for people over 40 years old
Being retrenched is not something good for people of any age group, other than kids.
It will be worse for those aged 40 and above. This group of people belongs to the sandwich class because they are like the meat being stuck at the centre.
Upside got aging parents; downside got schooling kids waiting to go college. Basically, this translates into huge financial liabilities as everyone within the family is essentially waiting for his/her income.
In addition, in today highly competitive global economy, a middle aged professional also have to complete with young 20s something with good college degrees and job experiences also.
The following are some advices for middle aged employees to avoid getting fired and those who are already fired to get back to work.
1. Social networking
Unless you are damn good in your field and capabilities, networking has been and always will be an important component to survive and excel in this world.
No matter how busy you are, establish deep rapport and connect deeply with those that you already know will definitely bring new ideas and insights.
Remember that creativity in problem solving is in the most basic sense, recombining existing elements like current ideas and insights found elsewhere.
2. Great adaptability
Employers like people with great adaptability. It means that you can easily do and complete tasks assigned to you.
The only constant is change and change brings opportunities. Changes within company mean that there are chances for you to work in different departments.
Traditionally speaking, people in technical field like engineering would always like to move on and move up the management field because that is where the higher paycheck lies. Organizations seeking to expand business overseas will need new people in management that will also have technical knowledge involved.
The best insurance policy for future employability will be taking on new roles, gain more insights in other job functions.
For fresh college graduates without jobs, taking on jobs on contract basis and totally unrelated in your field of studies is a good show of your adaptability.
3. Creating value
The purpose of doing both mental and physical work is to create value so as to increase the overall wealth of humanity. I don’t see anyone knocking his head against the wall for nothing.
Enterprises need to provide physical products and intangible services of value. If not, they won’t exist for long.
Similarly, employees need to create something of value for their organizations. The greater the values, the higher the income will be in future, all other factors like office politics skills being constant.
Customers are looking for value in products and services. Employers are looking for value from potential and current employees too.
Retrenchments for middle aged professional because size of their paychecks exceeded amount of contributions and value added and their companies can simply find replacements at lower prices for same amount of contributions.
This is like if you are working on low end menial jobs like doing simple repetitive tasks in factories and cleaning the toilets. Don’t expect whatever employers to increase pay over decades, there are millions of low cost workers from developing countries that can replace you at a fraction of your last drawn salary and work harder than you also.
As a result, discover how whatever skills and experiences you have and mentioned how they can add value to a potential job both in cover letters and during job interviews.
4. Developing skills and acquiring knowledge
Most people simply ignored and forget about further developing additional skills that can further enhance their specific niche areas when comfortably working within their job scopes.
Having additional skill sets that can assist you in excelling within your industry is another assurance for employability.
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