Offering a Hand--and a Friendly Ear--to Job Seekers Over 50 : Employment: Age needn’t be a barrier to re-entering the work force, say counselors who give resume and interviewing tips at Second Careers.
In December, 1991, Marsha Reynolds left Ohio to live in Los Angeles with her adult daughter’s family, armed with a bachelor’s degree in social science and more than 20 years’ experience in social work. Not yet 50, she figured that with her powerhouse resume, she would have an easy time beginning anew in Southern California, where she planned to spend her later years watching her granddaughter grow up.
Almost three years later, Reynolds, now 51, is still looking for work. On a recent Friday morning, she joined several other mature job seekers in an interviewing skills workshop at Second Careers, a Wilshire-based nonprofit placement agency whose workshops offer a unique blend of learning and emotional support for unemployed people 50 and older.
“I really didn’t think I’d have any problem finding work, with my experience and education,” said Reynolds as she addressed a group of nine women and one man gathered around her in a conference room high above mid-Wilshire.
As she spoke, a few graying heads nodded in assent. Each person had a story to tell: the former vice president of a pension administration firm who was laid off just before the Jan. 17 earthquake caused costly damage to her Mid-City home; a 23-year veteran of a major oil company who had lost her data-entry job in a corporate cutback; a widowed former nurse with two children in college unable to find work in a new field after an accident prevented her return to nursing.
From her chair near the window, Sheila Hazlett, the workshop leader, listened sympathetically to each story, letting the job seekers air their frustrations before offering advice.
“You don’t want to sell yourself short,” she told the group when the talk turned toward the desperation that drives some older workers to apply for entry-level jobs for which they are overqualified.
“Do not refer to yourself as entry-level,” she continued. “You deserve better than that. Don’t blame everything on age. Older people do get jobs.”
Hazlett, 55, can speak from experience. A former publisher with a master’s degree in journalism who lost her business in 1992 after a divorce, she was unable to re-enter the publishing field after a year and a half of searching.
“I found myself having to start over,” said Hazlett, who has two adult children. “You don’t expect to find yourself in this situation at this stage in life.”
Seeking help, Hazlett came to Second Careers, a program of the Volunteer Center of Los Angeles that has been assisting older workers in finding jobs since 1976. When she noticed the agency had an opening for a placement counselor, she decided to play up her communication skills and apply. She was granted an interview, in which she discussed the possibility of developing workshops to retrain older job seekers in interviewing and resume writing skills.
Hazlett was hired, and her workshops began in June. Offered every other Friday from 9 to 11:30 a.m., each session costs $5, including materials. Although the workshops target an over-50 audience, displaced workers in their 40s are also admitted.
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Second Careers has occasionally featured workshops by outside consultants, but Hazlett’s in-house program is the organization’s first, said director Todd Lipka. The new workshops have been developed to complement the agency’s newly opened job resource center, which offers a computer database for job seekers, as well as computer training classes, telephones and fax machines for their use.
Though the program is new, Hazlett said she has received grateful feedback from participants who used what they learned in the classes to get back in the work force, either through the efforts of the placement service or on their own.
The job resource center was developed through a grant received last spring from Care America 65-Plus, a health maintenance organization catering to older patients.
Under Hazlett’s direction, the workshops have a warm, sensitive feel--a cross between a job-hunting seminar and a group therapy session. She said she feels it is necessary to address the frustration and disappointment felt by many mature workers who were not planning to retire early, yet found themselves squeezed out of their jobs by a poor economy.
“It’s a huge shock to find out the company you had faith in puts you out the door,” Hazlett said.
According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of unemployed people 50 to 54 jumped 50% between July, 1984, and July, 1994, from 2.8% to 4.2%.
Lipka said many of the job seekers who come to Second Careers have not looked for work in several years, sometimes even decades. They are unaware of how to sell themselves to employers in the competitive job market of the 1990s, and must learn some job-hunting skills, such as resume writing, from scratch.
“They come from an era where you would put your height, weight and marital status on your resume,” he said. “It’s not like that anymore.”
Hazlett advised her workshop attendees to put together functional resumes, highlighting skills while downplaying chronological experience, a sure giveaway of age.
“Never, never put down the year you graduated,” she stressed. “If they see the age first, they may not go any further.”
Hazlett reminded the group that anyone over 40 is protected by age-discrimination laws and that it is illegal for an interviewer to ask an applicant’s age. She also warned them not to bring up the issue of age themselves, which she said many mature job applicants do because they are self-conscious.
Older job seekers need to be realistic about employment goals, Hazlett said, and should be forewarned that they may not land the same type of job at the same salary level they once had. But this does not mean they are unemployable.
“It’s not a myth that there is age discrimination out there,” she said. “But it is possible to make a midlife career change.”
Information: (213) 380-3166.
