Posted on July 6, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

<a href=”http://www.newsweek.com/id/70957″>Older Workers Not Ready To Quit</a>

A crop of smart firms are starting to employ older workers who wantand needto labor longer.

Davina Lloyd knows the perils of ageism. At 50, her career as a successful British magazine editor had abruptly stalled. “Like other skilled professionals, I found that mysteriously I just wasn’t being called to the interviews.” Solution: she launched her own recruitment agency, dedicated to finding employment for older workers. Six years on, Agewise Recruitment lists more than 3,000 names on its books and has helped a slew of frustrated job seekers, from diplomats to accountants, back into work in the face of continuing prejudice.

A number of companies across the Atlanticboth old and neware doing the same. Across the developed world, the first group of baby boomers are still healthy and eager to work (and many have to, thanks to pension cutbacks). Yet age-discrimination suits across much of America and Europe are running at near-record highs, as companies push older workers out in favor of younger, cheaper staff, willing and able to work round the clock. A 25-nation survey by the international recruitment agency Manpower earlier this year found that fewer than a quarter of businesses had strategies in place to recruit or retain older workers. Yet there are skill shortages in key industries that boomers can fill. Why the disconnect? Put simply: “Employers prefer workers that are young, attractive, intelligent and single,” says Ken Dychtwald, founder of Age Wave, a U.S.-based research and consulting firm that specializes in aging populations.

That’s an attitude that corporate strategists may come to regret. While OECD figures show that less than 60 percent of 50- to 65-year-olds in mature economies work, those numbers will shift as demographics push up the age of the employment pool. The boomers are certainly ready: only 12 percent of people now in their 40s and 50s expect to quit the workplace early, according to a global survey published earlier this year by the British bank HSBC.

Need is a huge factor, as retirement benefits and pensions dwindle on either side of the Atlantic, but many professional boomers are also bored by the prospect of endless golf and want to keep a hand in work. More than 10 percent of Americans ages 55 to 59 are collecting retirement benefits from one employer and working for another.

The impetus to employ older workers is especially strong in skills-scarce industries like technology and health care. Companies such as Hoffman-La Roche, Cigna, Mitre and Aerospace have established retiree temp pools with formal legal and compensation arrangements. In 2003, P&G and Eli Lilly founded YourEncore, a kind of employment agency for retired scientists and engineers that matches its 4,000 global “experts” to temporary needs at 23 member companies.

The Internet is also changing the game. Niche Web sites such as RetireeWorkforce.com and Dinosaurexchange.com hope to compete with Monster.com and the like by targeting seniors and the employers who need them. Dow Chemical will soon launch a social-networking site for its employees, including a special area for retirees, where current employees can tap their expertise.

In Europe, there’s a new vogue for “interim management”employing former bosses on short-term projects. “These people can just move in for three or six months, use their expertise and thenbangmove on to somewhere else, if that’s what they want,” says Tom Hadley of the Britain-based Recruitment and Employment Confederation. In recent years, scores of recruitment agencies have adapted to meet the changing demands while enterprising newcomers such as Agewise have entered the field to cater specifically to older workers. Trends are working in their favor as European employers turn increasingly to flexible short-termers. In Spain, one in three workers now appears on the payroll as a temp. U.S. firms are also keen on contract workers, as the lack of health-care costs results in higher profits for firms. At Scripps’s hospitals throughout San Diego, California, for example, 40 percent of the staff is 50 or older, with customized schedules that include a choice between higher pay or benefits.

The mix of options will increase only as boomer spending power does. The 50-plus population “controls most of the world’s wealth,” notes Dychtwald. As boomers shell out more in areas like financial services, tourism and retail, experts say those industries will begin hiring more older workers. We may see more boomers selling each other everything from annuities to package holidays. “We grew up being told you can have it allhave babies and a major career,” says Beth Gulas, whose U.S.-based consultancy, WorkPlace Management, makes a point of employing older staffers on easy schedules appropriate to their ages. Consultants average just 30 percent of their time on the road, compared with 90 percent in their youth. “We wore ourselves out,” she says. “Now, as older workers, we really can have it all. If we’re not accommodated, we’ll teach, become a consultant or go to a nonprofit.” Spoken with the optimism of a true boomer.

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Posted on July 5, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

Nimish Thakkar is a sought-after career management coach who has worked with thousands of clients from a variety of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies. Through …

With rising gas prices and a shrinking economy, both employers and employees are looking for creative work arrangements that will save valuable resources. Some companies have adopted four-day workweeks, while others are encouraging employees to work from home.

If you have ever cherished the desire to work in your pajamas, now may be the time to pitch for it. Fortunately, technology has made it easy. With video conferencing tools, multi-party phone conferencing systems, webinars, online meeting and presentation technologies, and other cutting-edge tools, every business task that once required a physical presence can now be done virtually.

While some companies have fairly structured telecommuting policies, others are still unaware of such a possibility. If your company is a late adopter, you may have to do some work to convince your boss. We have outlined a few strategies:

Provide concrete proof

You may have to prove to your superiors that not only is telecommuting a possibility, it can actually produce comparable results in terms of quality and effectiveness. As a pilot, you may have to volunteer on extra projects and complete them from home. Once your boss starts seeing tangible results on these projects, he may become more open to telecommuting.

Don’t be unfair to your employer

Work-life balance, shorter commute time, gas savings — whatever may be your motivation for a telecommute lifestyle, don’t forget the employer’s needs. Evaluate your company’s requirements and propose a deal that would be fair to your employer. Offer to work an extra hour everyday (which could be less than your commute time), volunteer to work half days on Saturdays, offer to come half-day every day, or propose a late evening work schedule if that is what your company needs from you — give them some incentive.

Highlight benefits

Senior executives base their decision-making on numbers, models, and analyses. Perform cost-benefit analysis, provide ROI numbers, demonstrate cost savings — highlight benefits to the employer.

Provide a workable solution and an accountability mechanism

Your proposal should have details about how you will make this arrangement work. Describe a detailed system for feedback and accountability. If done correctly, this should alleviate most concerns about telecommuting.

Defend the disadvantages

Despite the numerous benefits, there are some downsides to telecommuting that your boss may be concerned about. Prepare compelling reasons describing how you will minimize the impact of these disadvantages.

Nimish Thakkar is a sought-after certified career management coach and professional resume writer. Through his resume writing service, ResumeCorner.com, and free career information site, SaiCareers.com, he has helped thousands of clients. SaiCareers.com features hundreds of free articles and thousands of resources.

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Posted on July 4, 2008
Filed Under Job Seeking

Are you prepared if you lose your job?

Not to spoil your Monday, but how prepared are you to lose your job?

There’s little excuse these days for not being ready to kick a job search into high gear at a moment’s notice. Better yet, aim to become the type of perennial passive job seeker who stays in touch with former colleagues and industry peers and gets a call every now and again from a recruiter looking for candidates.

There’s little mystery about how it’s done. The hard part is remembering that it’s necessary. The threat of recession is a good reminder.

“In survival mode, people hunker down as opposed to taking risk,” said Sharon Noha, senior vice president at Bannockburn-based executive development firm Robertson Lowstuter Inc. “There’s tremendous opportunities for people during mergers and restructurings to step out into areas where they don’t have a lot of experience. Yet, in the times when there are the most possibilities, a lot of people lose out.

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“If you’ve got your head down and you’re tucked in a little corner someplace, your boss leaves and then who knows you? If you’ve done your work by creating some visibility, you have a much better chance of somebody carving out a new responsibility. It’s not really that different from networking externally, and you need to be doing both.”

Here are some other suggestions from experts:

Be visible. Neil Schermitzler, a regional human resources manager in Rosemont for Fujitsu Computer Systems, recommends, “Be visible in a very positive way. Volunteer for projects. Volunteer for overtime.”

Network online. If you haven’t created or updated your profile on a professional networking site such as LinkedIn, you are missing out on an easy way to raise your external visibility, said Diana Smith, managing director in Chicago at The Novo Group, a professional-services recruiting firm.

“It’s like your Internet business card,” Smith said. “Treat it just like you would a good resume, only you’re not limited to two pages the way you are on a resume. Show concrete accomplishments and information about what you could bring an employer. It’s a way of getting that information out there without the awkwardness of your employer seeing your resume posted on job boards.”

Ask your boss to write a few sentences about you for your profile, she recommends, or “write one for them first and ask them to return the favor. I’ve had a lot of my staff ask me to do this for them over the years. As a manager, I would expect them to put themselves out there and stay in touch with colleagues.”

Set benchmarks. Financial planner Michael Haubrich of Milwaukee-based Financial Service Group Inc. recommends benchmarking yourself every few years against the job market to find out how relevant and transferable your skills and experience are and what others in comparable positions make.

“It’s a good tactic for everyone periodically but especially now,” he said.

He recalls a client who initially resisted the notion that her biggest financial risk was job loss because she was overpaid, based on a career adviser’s assessment of what her job was worth and her transferable skills.

“When the company was sold, her job was on the chopping block,” he said. “They kept her long enough to do the knowledge transfer. She ended up working in a different industry, but her income is considerably lower.”

Start a career fund. Haubrich also recommends preparing for the inevitable job changes and career transitions by starting a “career asset working-capital fund,” in addition to your emergency reserves of three to six months of fixed expenses.

The fund has three functions: to continue lifelong education, to finance job changes and to fund sabbaticals during career makeovers or when you step out of the workforce for family or personal reasons.

One option is putting money aside in a Section 529 college tuition savings plan, where it can grow tax free. Most people think of using 529 plans to save for their children and grandchildren, but you can make yourself the beneficiary.

The main lesson from Haubrich’s suggestion is that you will need to invest in maintaining your most important asset, often without help from an employer. The amount depends on your salary, your career’s volatility and how many changes you make.

Young workers face the prospect of changing jobs nearly nine times before they reach age 32, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, the average length of unemployment for all ages was nearly 17 weeks. Workers over 50 face longer job searches.

“It’s obvious that a fund for job-change costs is a necessary part of a personal financial plan,” Haubrich said. “Figure out how much are we talking about and where can you get access to it so it’s available when you need it.”

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