Career Change Over 40

Many people reach the age of 40 and find they are discontented with their careers, but feel that age is a barrier to change. However, populations in the West are growing older, pensions systems can’t keep up, and so unless you’ve accumulated a lot of money, you are probably going to find that you have to work past what you might have hoped would be retirement age. Unfortunately, employers haven’t yet caught up with this trend and as a result, people over 40 or 50 are not always welcomed when it comes to hiring.

If you are in this situation, don’t despair - there are things you can do to improve your chances of getting a job, irrespective of the prevailing attitudes of employers. To start with, when creating your CV or résumé, you can target it very precisely for the job in question. You have got the experience which younger people don’t have and so you can highlight this in the early part of your résumé to make your application stand out, so that career change over 40 becomes a positive experience.

You don’t have to put personal information, like date of birth, on your CV – in many countries it’s against the law to ask for this information. Although age discrimination is now illegal in the UK, employers still tend to be suspicious if they don’t see a date of birth. If you feel the need to mention it, put it right at the end, which means you’ll have sold yourself before the employer sees it. You should also leave out your marital status or the number of children you have, if any. Remember, this is just not relevant.

Let’s look at the positive aspects of being a little bit older - you have experience and skills which youngster don’t have and these are incredibly valuable to a prospective employer. You may think this doesn’t apply if you are heading back to work after raising a family, but you’d be wrong – soft skills, which includes things like communication, time management and the ability to meet deadlines are extremely important in the market place and I’m sure that as a parent, you have got most of those skills down to a fine art. Make a list of all the skills you have build up over the last twenty years, whether they were gained in employment, at home or as a student. You might be surprised to realize just how many you have - and how many of them are transferable.

If you discover that the career of your choice has a tendency to employ younger people, think about becoming self-employed. More and more roles which were once carried out be staff on the payroll are now being outsourced. Could you find contact work using your existing skills? If you aren’t up to date with the latest computer software, how about asking your kids if they could teach you or check out local evening classes, - basic computer skills are often taught free of charge. You’ll need to keep up to date with your own particular industry, and if you’ve been out of the workforce for a while, you should check out refresher courses.

The way we work is changing, which is good news as it’s unlikely that you’ll find job satisfaction in one place. Think about the skills you would really like to be part of your job (both existing skills and ones you want to learn) and the activities you know would give you job satisfaction. Then think about the possibility of having more than one way in which you could earn a living. For example, it might be possible to work as a freelance in your present (or past) career for a couple of days a week and you might have an idea for setting up a small business doing something entirely different. If you have skills which other people want and you get on well with people, think about teaching a class, running a weekend workshop or writing an instructional manual. This doesn’t necessarily have to be related to jobs you have had. Many people do extremely well teaching hobby or sport or you could choose an aspect of parenting or dealing with a health problem. Consider everything you’ve done so far in life and you’re sure to discover one or two fields in which you could be considered an expert.

As long as you are prepared to look beyond the conventional concept of a job, you will uncover new possibilities, irrespective of the age you happen to be.

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