Older Workers Get Training for Success in Jobs of the ‘90s

When Allyn DeVillier began her secretarial career back in 1946, the most complicated office machine she had to operate was a typewriter--and a manual one at that.

But times, of course, change. So when DeVillier found herself in the job market last year, at age 65, she had trouble. Although she was accomplished in every other secretarial skill--typing 75 words per minute, shorthand, filing and so on--after almost half a century as an executive secretary she had never been required to learn the one essential skill of office life in the ‘90s: operating a computer.

DeVillier didn’t know an MS-DOS from a megabyte. A program was something on TV. The only kind of spell check she was familiar with was a dictionary.

“I was intimidated” by computers, the Torrance resident admits now, laughing. “It seemed like such a mystery.”

Although she can laugh about it now, it wasn’t funny at the time. DeVillier wanted a job--partly because her Social Security income wasn’t enough, and partly because she couldn’t imagine herself not working--but after applying for dozens of secretarial jobs she still hadn’t gotten even one offer. She thinks her age might have been one factor, but the biggest problem, she thinks, was the lack of computer skills.

“It was very discouraging,” she says. “I just felt so obsolete.”

Then DeVillier heard about the Carson/Lomita/Torrance Private Industry Council, a federally funded agency that provides job training and placement for workers like DeVillier. The PIC helped DeVillier get a job with the Torrance Personnel Department and, more important, sent her to word-processing school.

“I can hardly believe it now,” DeVillier says. “But I actually came to enjoy” operating a computer. Now DeVillier is a 20-hour-per-week senior aide at the Torrance Finance Department. And on Tuesday, she was honored by the City Council in observance of “Hire the Older Worker Week.”

“They really add a lot to the office,” DeVillier’s boss, Toni Branscum, says of DeVillier and another older worker who came to her office through the PIC program. “They’re always willing and able, and their experience is very valuable.”

And unlike some younger workers, Branscum says, DeVillier doesn’t reflexively go into catatonic shock when the computer system crashes.

“There are a lot of advantages to hiring older workers,” says Fawn Mayer, a program assistant for the Carson/Lomita/Torrance PIC, which helps train and place about 20 older workers every year. Older workers are defined as those over age 55, of which there are more than 1.5 million in California alone. Mayer says that studies show older workers to be more dependable, with strong work ethics and loyalty to their employers. They are also, by definition, more mature.

And as DeVillier has demonstrated, they are also ready and willing to learn new skills--even if that requires overcoming fear of computers.

“It’s just done wonders for me,” DeVillier says of her entry into the once mysterious world of computers.

In fact, she says, “I think a home computer would be nice.”