After the holiday break, I was not surprised to start 2011 with a full inbox, but what has been startling is the number of emails I have received from people over 50 who have been laid off and can’t find work.
For months, in some cases years, these people have carried on discouraging job-search campaigns directed toward securing the kind of work they did before “the bottom fell out” of their professional lives.
They have reached the point where they feel they “can’t buy a job” and are at their wits end as to what to do next.
At first I wondered, what do I say to these people? But then I noticed that none of them mentioned doing anything to create something new.
Few people would seriously consider investing retirement funds in a passbook savings account because the return would not be adequate to meet future needs. Yet many, too many, continue on the path of trying to find work as a job-seeker, rather than create it entrepreneurially, even though the potential for long-term viability isn’t there.
No one said anything like, “I’ve started to explore web design,” or “I’ve been taking a course in non-profit management,” or “I’ve been studying one of the healing arts” on their own, through adult education classes, or at a community college.
They all recognized that the door to the work they had previously done was closing, if not already closed, but they gave no sign of moving toward another door. Their focus was on going back to what they once had, not on imagining a new workplace identity and incrementally making it a reality. They didn’t seem to be able to take comfort in the fact that, as the old proverb says, when one door closes, another opens.
Of course, other doors don’t open automatically. You have to explore different hallways and jiggle a few handles to find the one that is right for you, and you have to overcome your fear of having to develop new competencies before you can step over the threshold.
SURVIVOR GUILT
Last summer, I took a walk with a dear friend and long-time client who has very effectively re-invented herself and is happily employed in a new field.
She said that in the affluent suburban town where she lives, many of her friends and neighbors were dealing with their own or a spouse’s long-term unemployment, and it was often awkward for her to be doing so well.
I reminded her that she was where she was because she had gone through an extensive process of self-discovery, education, and experimentation, and the position she enjoyed now was a direct result of the time, energy and resources she had devoted to formal courses, self-study, information interviews, volunteer work, etc.
“I feel so bad about what’s happening to them,” she said, “but you’re right, I don’t see them investing in themselves”
BUSINESS LIFE CYCLE
I am convinced that anyone looking for work needs to think and act like a small business owner. This is because, despite all the talk from politicians about creating more of them, the job belongs to the Industrial Age, an era that has passed. What we need to learn how to do in the current era, the Information or Conceptual Age, is what business owners have been doing all along, i.e., create work for ourselves.
Entrepreneurs start with an idea, which they try out in a home office or a kitchen or a garage, and if it begins to take off, they develop an infrastructure which allows their business to grow and become profitable.
When they’ve “made it,” reached the pinnacle of the business cycle (see above diagram), they face a very different sort of risk—complacency, competition and decline. It’s absolutely essential that they continually go back to their roots, to the “idea stage” from which new ventures spring. It’s the only way to protect the business from the downward plunge of the backside of the business cycle.
The same is true for people seeking work, but sadly, the ones who are caught up what I call “jobthink,” the belief that just getting a job is going to solve all their problems, have not yet learned to think this way.
While they’re employed, they invest most of their energy in doing the job and little or none in themselves.
When they’re out of work, they repeat the pattern by devoting themselves to traditional, often fruitless, job-search practices instead of pursuing their own professional development.
BABY BOOMERS
Recently a segment on the PBS News Hour, examined the potential impact on the economy as the baby boomers begin to qualify for social security.
Ted Fishman, author of Shock of Gray, observed, “People are being pushed out of their primary employment before they get to Social Security age [resulting in] the highest employment in history for the 50-plus worker.”
He went on to say that it is not enough anymore to think exclusively in terms of saving for retirement. We also need to protect ourselves against the very real possibility of “pre-mature” forced retirement or semi-retirement.
This means that, “The money you save over your lifetime may also be well invested if you invest in yourself and your skills. Instead of becoming a low-value worker in your fifties … you will have high intellectual capital, high skills, so that there isn’t the pressure to push you out of the work force.”
Few people would seriously consider investing retirement funds in a passbook savings account because the return would not be adequate to meet future needs. Yet many, too many, continue on the path of trying to find work as a job-seeker, rather than create it entrepreneurially, even though the potential for long-term viability isn’t there.
We routinely expend large amounts of our resources on our children’s education, but not our own. Yet in a world where long-term employment in any particular job or with any one company is becoming less and less common, expanding our knowledge and improving our skills is the only basis for a secure future. This is where the new ideas and ventures which will continue sustain us in the “business” of making a living throughout our work life come from.
Hi Bev,
Thanks for a thoughtful issue this month, as always. I have been searching for “good” employment since June 2008. I am trying to be more creative in my approach to finding work, but sometimes find myself using my old thinking and approaching things in much the same way as I have in the past. I actually did create two new businesses of my own with limited results when the economy crashed.
It is difficult for those of us who are “mature” people to rethink ourselves, as you know. At 65 I never anticipated that I would be in this position; however, the job climate has changed and it has changed forever. We older people really need to understand that we need to change. And then we may need to change again if we are to keep up with things and create incomes for ourselves.
I just completed a computer program at the Career Center in Hyannis in an effort to upgrade my skills, but is this upgrade so that I can get a job that pays $9/hour? I hope not, but maybe.
I know I need to really open myself to new things, to new thinking, to new possibilities; however, I feel like I need an exorcism of the old me. I need guidance and I know that all of us in this position need guidance. We are in “the new normal” and it is nothing we recognize. Who Moved My Cheese?? We cannot resist — we must change and see new possibilities for ourselves. We must change. There is no other choice.
Hi again, Bev, and thanks for a thought-provoking article. The world in which we live has changed, perhaps forever, when it comes to employment. I wonder if, instead of “investing” in ourselves (to get a job, to stay current, to hone skills, to find the next incarnation of whatever we used to do), we were to begin “believing” in ourselves, that the stuff we’re meant to be and do in this life is already inside us, and won’t (never did, never will) show up in the Cape Cod Times. We’re all entrepreneurs at heart (and at soul); humans are here to express their innate creative essence. When we discover the energy that’s [always been] burning inside us, we ignite a fire that sustains us throughout the rest our lives. That has proven far more meaningful in my life than any of the 35 years of “careers” I had in the outside world. A cool by-product — I never have to deal with even the concept of retirement. P.S. I’m 64. Thank you. Brad Glass http://www.RoadNotTaken.com
I am a career coach and a job retention mentor, I work with very low imcome people. “jobs” seem so scared to them because most of them don’t have any idea of how to be entreprenurial. Those skills seem fairly sophisticated to me and to them. I have 2 questions I would love your thought on: 1.Perhaps “Groud of your own chooosing” is not for entry level workers?
2.How do you teach/coach/help people with very busy lives and few resources to become entreprenuial?
Nancy,
Thanks so for your feedback. Those are very good questions.
When I was divorced and suddenly faced with supporting myself and my children, I had two degrees in American history and no work experience. Because there was no job in the local newspaper that fit my credentials, paid enough money or had the flexibility I needed as a single parent, I opened my own business. The decision was not brave or even strategic. It was a practical necessity.
My message to the people I work with, on all levels of the economic spectrum (in addition to my counseling practice, I provide training and support to several non-profit agencies which serve low income populations here on Cape Cod) is the same: learning to think like a entrepreneur is essential for long-term work security, regardless of who you are and where you are on the socioeconomic scale.
But the entrepreneurial mindset can’t be learned overnight. It has to be learned incrementally, in small steps, through study and experimentation, just like anything else. It is a process that is fraught with ups and downs, victories and setbacks, which is why ongoing support, whether it’s a career counselor, or a mentor such as yourself, or a group of peers, is so important. In my experience, income level is not a barrier to the empowerment potential of the business owner mindset which I present in my book.
I almost always obtain “nuggets” from Beverly’s artilces, but this one, I thought, was particularly interesting. Although her focus is on people in the latter part of their careers, I think there are lessons for anyone, any age.
I work in turnaround environments where there is wrenching and challenging change for people who have been in the company for a while.
I shared this article with my team leaders, most of whom have many years of work ahead of them, and showed them what I thought was the parallel for them. Working through and contributing to our company changes, and improving their skills – which will allow them to grow now, and add to their resume for future challenges.
I have long believed that we are all responsible for our own careers; the name on your deposit advice is no guarantee. Aren’t we are all small business people, managing the business of our, and our family’s, life?
Terrific article, Beverly!
What a timely kick-in-the butt reminder of how important it is to engage in a systematic plan of continuing education.
“Learner” is one of my top personality traits, and one that needs to be fed.
Good counsel. Thank you.