Anyway Else Finding it Really Hard to Get a Job?

Sarahspangles

It’s unusual to go from a desk job (presumably) to something more physical in middle age. And you’ve established that it’s a competitive job market with high turnover. Do you know what your references (if any) will say?

Normally if people want a less demanding role from middle age they look for a more junior role in their current field. Do you have a good reference from your long term role? Is there nothing that would allow you to use some transferable skills or knowledge? Have you tried writing a functional resume and then objectively considering what that suggests? Best to leave off the niche/historical stuff if that’s no longer useful in the job market.   

discat11

Similar to my experience. After an unexpected redundancy in 2022, I took a couple of years off expecting my OH to take early retirement and she didn't so I got bored recently & started to apply for jobs again. 
I mistakenly thought looking simply for interesting jobs 9-5 M-Fri at the lower end of the scale (less than half my previous management salary) would be easy. They certainly aren't!

I have no wish to take on an unsociable hours job at 60 years of age, and if that's all that's going then it's no wonder they struggle to fill them.

Although I've had interviews I think some of the reluctance to take on older employees might just be that it's a bigger risk of someone like me walking out on them since I don't absolutely HAVE to work, I just want to. 

debtslave2024

@discat11 I am hearing from fellow employees much younger than myself, that they are also finding it hard to get decent employment, though I suspect that once you are over 45, it will become harder, and harder with each year that passes.

I have asked employers during the few interviews that I get, about how many applicants they are getting for their minimum wage vacancies. They are tell me that it is often over 100 per vacancy, and they have to quickly pull the advertisement to stop the numbers increasing further.

In my city, which I believe is typical of the UK outwith London, a quick daily job search would seem to suggest that much of the employment on offer is minimum wage, bottom of the barrel, “pump and dump” stuff, i.e. short term/dead end jobs, often 3 month/zero hour contracts, burger flipping, pushing things about in warehouses etc. 

Another trend I have seen is that certain employers mainly agencies, are advertising vacancies when there are no immediate vacancies available. They are doing it simply to fill their books of potential employees names up to the max, for the ultimate “fluid/dynamic workforce.”

And as for unsocial hours, I will be up at 3am to 4am tomorrow, perfect attendance, tried my best, to only be told that I will most likely be “shown the door” in 3 weeks time, as I could not meet their ridiculous “human robot” target of placing one whole box of goods on the shelf every single 40 seconds for the entire duration of the shift (I have not seen anyone physically capable of that.) 

I never used to understand the amount of people that I saw queuing up at food banks around me, but now I certainly do!

theoretica

The more people can do a job, and the easier to apply it is (click here to upload CV), the more applications it will have. So putting you on the hard side of the numbers game.  Of course the other side of that is the more unusual the skills, the fewer jobs need them, and the jobs which intentionally don't advertise widely are harder to find.

Grumpy_chap

discat11 said:

Although I've had interviews I think some of the reluctance to take on older employees might just be that it's a bigger risk of someone like me walking out on them since I don't absolutely HAVE to work, I just want to. 

My philosophy on this is that someone who WANTS to work, rather than HAS to work, is a far better choice for the employer.

debtslave2024

@Grumpy_chap Isn't that viewpoint a bit too simplistic? Take my ancestor, for example. He had to present himself in court for a public inquiry, after overseeing a major mine disaster that tragically killed hundreds of people. He didn't die in the accident himself, but years later, he died from horrific lung gangrene caused by working in those mines. Do you think that anyone *wanted* to work in such dangerous conditions, or did they have to out of necessity? I strongly suspect that very few of them indeed wanted to be there, yet regardless of their personal motivations, they all still delivered handsome profit to their masters, many of them with their lives.

TELLIT01

I ended up taking a job in the Civil Service, which was just intended to be a stopgap move.  It ended up being for the 7 worst years of my life before retirement, but coming on the heels of the financial crash of 2008 there was no real way out.  

I didn't believe all the horror stories about how badly the public sector was run.  The truth was actually far worse than I could ever have imagined.  

I worked processing new claims for benefits and the number of claims we were expected to clear each day kept on increasing.  In a staff meeting I said that it was impossible to do the required number of claims per day accurately.  I still can't believe the answer our manager gave - "Accuracy isn't one of your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), just the number of claims processed.  If there are errors they become the responsibility of another team to sort out".  Apparently that team was measured on the number of errors they picked up, and they would fail to meet their KPI if they didn't find enough.  Can you imagine any private sector company demanding that a certain number of errors were detected, rather than demanding the number of errors be reduced?

Grumpy_chap

TELLIT01 said:

Can you imagine any private sector company demanding that a certain number of errors were detected, rather than demanding the number of errors be reduced?

I once worked for a private company (but formerly public sector) in Team A.  One of our KPIs was the number of errors we reported.  Month on month increases in reported errors was expected.

Team A relied on a good working relationship with Team B to achieve wider outcomes.  One of the KPIs for Team B was to achieve month on month reductions in the number of reported errors.

This had the immediate impact that the relationship between Team A and Team B disintegrated, thus affecting the delivery of wider outcomes but, also, it was impossible for both Team A and Team B to achieve the KPIs with regard to errors.

In amongst this was Team C, who had the job to resolve errors and their KPI was the number of errors resolved per month, for which the month on month increase in resolved errors was expected.  Team C could only succeed if Team A succeeded and were guaranteed to fail if Team B succeeded.  Fortunately, Team C often failed their KPI to resolve errors within 3 months of an error being reported, which meant Team A could report the same error again.

You really couldn't make it up!

Pinklepurr

It’s tough out there! After a recent redundancy my husband has found that it is the most difficult jobs market he has experienced in decades.  He was made redundant from a management job, but has many years of hands on technical experience, but he has found it impossible so far to secure a new role.  Common themes seem to be applications disappearing into the ether without any response, recruiters failing to return calls, jobs wanting every single skill imaginable for less than half of his previous salary. No feedback following interviews, jobs being withdrawn and then being filled internally. Companies changing their minds as to what they need or putting recruitment on hold.  Age discrimination is rife. Plus of course there is the sheer number of applicants. What we have noticed is that if you are a Project Manager then there are tons of jobs out there, or qualified in “agile methodologies”, that’s another one!  Companies are also now full of “Talent Aquisition” people who are the gatekeepers to the hiring managers.  We’ve just got to hang in there and keep trying but it is soul destroying and erodes your self esteem.

Sarahspangles

Pinklepurr said:

What we have noticed is that if you are a Project Manager then there are tons of jobs out there, or qualified in “agile methodologies”, that’s another one!

I am both. If you have the right mindset for projects, it’s not expensive to get an accreditation. The downside is that if you are any good, you keep working yourself out of a job! I am retiring at the end of my current contract.