The Right Senior for the Job : Career Workshops Are Gaining in Popularity

He’s the perfect model for this week’s national observance of “Employ the Older Worker Week” spotlighting the value of senior citizens in the work force. He’s a model of skill and experience who has never missed a deadline, shows up rain or shine, always prepared and universally cheerful.

He is, of course, Santa Claus.

OK, so in this case Santa is a gimmick. In reality, the Los Angeles Council on Careers for Older Americans prefers to cite the work records of the over-55 clientele it deals with, stressing experience, reliability, stability, work ethic, proven skills.

The council, funded by private foundations, corporate contributions, the City Private Industry Council and the Job Training Partnership Act administered through the City Community Development Department, serves as a go-between for businesses seeking qualified help and older workers, sometimes retired, sometimes laid off by company relocations or restructuring, sometimes simply in need of change.

The council, which stresses that it is not an employment agency, posts lists of available jobs called in by prospective employers, usually lower-paying work, often part-time, that may or may not be steady. Finding a need to help middle management and professional employees relocate in the job market, the council last fall initiated a series of workshops geared to their needs.

These are people who often find it difficult to re-enter the work force or to relocate, perhaps reluctant to settle for a job with lesser prestige and lower pay, said Vicki Plowman, council associate director in charge of the workshops.

Plowman is overjoyed at the response the workshops have brought--and the results. Of the 26 persons, about equally divided between males and females, who participated in the first class (the third now is under way), 13 responded to follow-up questionnaires and at least six reported finding jobs. That, Plowman pointed out, is a 25% success rate.

In several instances, those who found jobs credited their success directly to tips from workshop instructor Fred Merrill, a 64-year-old retiree and an experienced personnel officer and veteran of mid-career change. Some of his suggestions for job-hunting success seemed almost simplistic. But they worked for several class members.

Merrill’s advice to read newspaper classified ads, for example, paid off for Robert Miller, who found the job in management recruiting that he wanted. Stress on networking--tapping contacts about where to look, what’s available in a particular field, the right people to call--worked for Les Wagner. Presentation of concise, to-the-point resumes helped David Millar and Willia Najera.

So far, Sid Herman hasn’t found his niche. But he recalls that one of Merrill’s most-repeated admonitions was “persistence, keep looking, don’t give up.”

Robert Miller, a young-looking 62, has 40 years of experience: as a World War II pilot for four years, a foreign service officer for 34 years and a member of an international peacekeeping agency for two years. He thought his background should qualify him for management recruitment. He was right.

“My problem was trying to translate my government service overseas to an employer here,” Miller said. “I had learned a lot in liaison work overseas, and I expanded it.”

He found his job with Management Recruiters, a 30-year-old search firm with 300 branches around the country, “chasing newspaper ads--I ran across it in the paper.” He said the firm wanted to know his motivation in seeking the job.

“I said I wanted to put my skills to good use, to be useful,” Miller said. “After the second interview they said ‘Go to work.’ ”

His job is to find the right person for the right job, to fill a client company’s request for a worker with precisely the right qualifications.

“We look for the skills, qualifications, education, experience the firm asks for,” he said. “We search. We don’t have a file full of applicants. We go out and find the person, usually through networking.

“We also have individuals come to us--somebody, say, is here from Houston and wants to make a change.”

So Bob Miller is adjusting to “retirement” in Southern California, where he and his wife visited on their foreign service leaves, where they have family ties and where they always knew they’d retire. But apparently there was never any doubt that Miller would continue to work.

“It keeps you young,” he said. “Your outlook is different. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to sit around. I know what my wife would say: ‘Out! Get out!’ ”

Several years ago Les Wagner retired at 61 after 31 years as a teacher and attendance counselor with the Los Angeles Unified School District. Although he still had a son in high school, Wagner said, “I had reached the end of my energy.”

He found time to increase his social life and did volunteer work in social service and, after a Coro Foundation program for seniors, Medicare advocacy.

“Then,” he said, “we needed a new roof on the house, the car was blowing up, my son went to college and my third daughter was planning her wedding. I decided it was time to work for some money.”

Wagner signed up for the Careers for Older Americans council’s workshop for professionals “and it helped me to really focus on what I wanted and could do. It took me back to my training in social work and education.”

Plowman heard of a job as a vocational counselor with the Fairfax Adult School, which cooperates in sponsoring the workshops for older professionals.

“I have been happily working since November,” Wagner said. “I’ve had a lot of experience in vocational counseling and I know the (educational) system, the community resources, adult education. I work with immigrants just learning the language and with older persons learning new skills. I feel very comfortable.”

Wagner works 12 hours a week at $23 an hour; his only problem may be making too much money eventually under state retirement system rules.

“I am meeting needs rather than just getting by,” he said. “My wife and I are still square dancing. I am almost having it all at this time.”

At 52, David Millar was a few years shy of the age requirement for the workshops for professionals, but he knew what he wanted--a property management job in the $35,000-$50,000 range--and he hoped the class could give him pointers on getting it.

He did indeed land “the job I had hoped to get.” He manages a Lennox motel for a large property management firm at a salary of $46,000 a year. It entails being on call all hours of the day and night but, said Millar, “The job is enjoyable. I’m enjoying life.”

He thinks that the brief resume he learned about in the workshop contributed to his getting his new job and that the workshops helped focus his goals. Willia Najera, 61, a registered nurse who experienced job burnout after several years as an emergency room floor nurse at County-USC Medical Center, agreed, especially about the resume portion of the class.

“Before I went (to the workshops) I had even paid to have a resume done for me,” she said. “It was so long that it turned off prospective employers before they read the whole thing. Mr. Merrill took us through each stage of a resume and showed us how to zero in on the positive.”

Najera left her brief two-paragraph resume when she applied for a position as a nurse-manager for a prepaid health plan. She was interviewed, she said, because “they were impressed with my resume” and she now supervises 16 persons, reports at business and quality assurance meetings and channels medical review charts to doctors.

She also still gets calls from other prospective employers with whom she left resumes.

During the workshop Sid Herman said he wanted to find another job doing what he had been doing: “run a company, in high-tech or defense supply.”

Herman, 62, has not found that dream job, but he has re-evaluated his position, looked at the situation realistically and come to a conclusion:

“I have learned how to tell a person I’m not interested in going back at the level I was at before,” he said. “I am not interested in challenging a company; I am interested in being productive.

“And I have found I need the satisfaction of helping somebody else.”

Herman has revamped his resume and utilized both networking and search firms in his job quest. He has returned for expanded follow-up sessions to the workshop. He admits to seeing himself in a different light.

“I have a more realistic view of myself and my job situation,” he said. “I feel so good about being able to help myself, and I’ve found I feel good meeting people with the same sort of problems. The workshops have been a very fulfilling experience.”

Fred Merrill and Vicki Plowman are pleased with the reception participants have given the workshops and have adjusted the curriculum to specific needs. Now into a third series, networking and follow-up sessions have been expanded, Merrill said.

“We found networking was a problem for these older workers,” Merrill said. “They have a hard time admitting they need help in finding a job. They have been working a long time, been self-sufficient, made their own way.

“For some it is a generational thing developed during the Depression. For people of other cultures, asking for help may be difficult.”

Merrill said later sessions also have dealt more extensively with “Plan B, a fallback plan. We also have dealt more with being over-qualified, status, rejection, age, what the person is selling on the job market.”

Both Merrill and Plowman noted one of the chief values of the workshops is the support and encouragement that participants provide each other, the confidence they foster. The council also refers job-seekers to other agencies and resources that may be helpful to them.

Ironically, for Vicki Plowman the highlight of the series was a dropout: “One person who was signed up called one day and said, ‘I can’t come to class. I’ve got a job!’ ”