Ask Slashdot: Finding Work Over 60?

First time accepted submitter Hatfield56 writes "I've been in IT since the mid-1980s, mainly working for financial institutions. After 16 years at a company, as a programmer (Java, C#, PL/SQL, some Unix scripting) and technical lead, my job was outsourced. That was in 2009 when the job market was basically dead. After many false starts, here I am 3 years later wondering what to do. I'm sure if I were 40 I'd be working already but over 60 you might as well be dead. SO, I'm wondering about A+. Does anyone think that this will make me more employable? Or should I being a greeter at Walmart?"

Comments

Asbestos Removal

[MightyYar]

Definitely get into asbestos removal. Asbestosis won't hit for 30 years.

Consulting

[dhermann]

Rather than applying for a full-time position, have you considered forming your own independent consulting business? You would have to leverage your contacts in the industry, but there is a massive difference in the culture between hiring a 60-year-old technical lead and hiring a 60-year-old's consulting business. Vendor management contacts just won't care, in my opinion, if you're professional and can get results.

IT jobs at 60.

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel for you. I was laid off 6 years ago at 50 and I finally got a state IT tech job for way, waaaaayyyyyy less money.

I have almost built back up to where I was 7 years sgo but it was tough.

A+ or any of the other minor certs will not make much difference in your job marketability.

Re:IT jobs at 60.

[bfandreas]

This is the bit that has always amazed me. Our sector thrives on experience and there hasn't been anything genuinely new these past 20 years. Only the jargon and the syntax of the languages ever changed.

The only reason why I never employ somebody past 40 is because we can't pay the kind of money they expect. So you may have to scale back on that. No kind of certification trumps the kind of resume you could send.
Also you may have to disclose your retirement plans. And one possible cause making you unemployable are insurance premiums. Disclose you have your own healthcare plan and don't need that from your prospective employer. Perhaps your best option would be to go freelance? Corporate HR tends to be stupid when it comes to hiring.

Re:IT jobs at 60.

[eln]

Just so you know, asking an older person for their retirement plans in an interview or at any point during the hiring process can open you up to a very costly age discrimination lawsuit. Not hiring people over 40 because you think they'll ask for too much money will do the same. If you're simply reporting that people that age tend to ask for too much money that's one thing, but if you're proactively screening out older applicants because you think they might ask for too much money, that's against the law.

Contracting...

[cayenne8]

Get into contracting. If you've not done it before...look around and get with a contracting company....preferrably one that does Federal Govt Contracting.

Can you survive a clearance check?

If so, you should have no problem getting on with a company doing DoD contracting....they OFTEN look for years of experience. If you're good, have a decent resume, they will submit you in....they want you to get the jobs so they can get $$ off you.

The market is often dying to hire people with lots of resume experience.

You definitely have a leg up on younger programmers.

Expectations

[Zarjazz]

I have to ask what your expectations are and be realistic.

As an employer actively recruiting IT staff at the moment, rare in the current job market I know, and I have a choice between a recent uni-graduate and someone with 15 yrs experience who I can hire for almost the same wages because so many skilled IT staff have been laid off and need to pay their mortgage. For me the choice is obvious, I don't care about the age factor.

However I also interview many many people who think they deserve to get the same remuneration they got from their high-flying finance job and wonder why they are still jobless after two years.

Re:Expectations

[hubang]

For me the choice is obvious, I don't care about the age factor.

That philosophy is a-typical in hiring managers. I've seen too many hiring managers who want that recent college grad (specifically a 22 to 24 year old grad), since he/she will work 80 hours a week without complaining about it. The person with 15 years of experience wants more money and a more reasonable work environment (like spending time with his/her family).

At my last job, they laid off my entire team, except for the guy who graduated 2 months before and lived for the job. No girlfriend. No hobbies.

Also, 3 years out of the job market is considered to be your fault by hiring managers, no matter what. It doesn't matter that you couldn't find a job. And often, people are willing to make ridiculous compromises to get a job these days.

Teaching

[Adekyn]

Have you considered obtaining a teaching "certificate" (not necessarily a teaching degree) and teaching kids how to code? Consult your local school system to see if your skills and experience can be used. If they don't have a programming course - offer to create one.

Re:Walmart greeter

[bagboy]

I don't know about that. I think they are outsourcing in my area. When I pull into the parking lot, there's always a homeless person with a sign welcoming me and asking for donations :\

And this, kids ...

[tgd]

And this, kids, is precisely why you need to plan aggressively for retirement.

(To the original poster, I don't really have any suggestions, but you're making an important point -- work hard, save hard, and "what can I do to find work" when you're 60 isn't a question you'll need to worry about...)

Open Source portfolio

[flurdy]

I would recommend (not knowing if you already do this) becoming active with open source projects. I don't necessarily mean become an Apache commiter, but participate in projects in a minor way (bug testing, mailing lists, forums) , create some of your own pet projects however small they may be and share them on github/bitbucket, answer questions on Stack Overflow/Server Fault, etc. That way you establish an online portfolio of who and what you do.

I often refer to people's online presence as a differentiator when I evaluate CVs and interviews. Someone with an active Github account would indicate someone willing to learn and share and would fit in very well in my team. Someone unknown online, would raise a few question marks, and with enough alternative CVs...

Re:A+ = F

[dizzy8578]

A+ is useless except for getting past those clueless 25 year old HR drones.

Cut your own trail

[mcrbids]

The problem you face is one that I faced long ago in a completely different vein. I was unemployable, because although I had developed programming skills, they were self-taught by reading books and websites rather than school. Without significant experience, I was unemployable as all the jobs had requirements like Bachelor's requirements.

So I did what seemed to be the only thing left - started my own company! I chatted it up with anybody I could find who ran a business and needed something done, found some people willing to pay for a solution, and worked long hours for a while until my revenue stream was sufficient to live on. Now 15 years later, I have ownership of a valuable company that has grown successfully every single year since starting, employees working a job they like with decent pay and a work environment set up the way I like it. Sure, it has its stresses, but they are stresses I choose to assume or ignore, and I like the control that offers me.

It's not for everyone, but I will probably never have a "job" ever again.

Re:Cut your own trail

[Safety Cap]

You will never be unemployed again, because you work for more than one person

FIFY.

When I am employed by a company, I have one "client". When that client lets me go (rif/outsource/fired/whatever), I have no other income.

When I have 3-4 clients and one client lets me go (can't afford my rates/personality clash/they went crazy and I had to fire them/they hired someone fulltime/etc), I have other clients that keep some $$$ coming in.

As long as I have n+1 clients (where n = sufficient income), then I'm doing well.

Call me new-fashioned

[Xacid]

But when I interview I look for a few things: technical merit, reliable, personality, enthusiasm.

It doesn't even cross my mind that an older candidate wouldn't be qualified. Often, I expect them to have a mountain of experience that could get absorbed into the company. What I've run into though is the older folks often don't have that "nerd enthusiasm", haven't kept their skills current, or are just stuffy with no sense of humor. Maybe it's a generational thing? But a young person with the same ailments wouldn't have a shot here either.

Re:Call me new-fashioned

[miltonw]

Having just gone through a job change and being ... older ... I'd say this is perhaps the best advice so far.

Be enthusiastic about the work you will be doing. Be up to date, or close to it, on the skills that the work will require. Don't just talk about what you've done but talk about what you will do when you are hired.

And remember that a smile takes years off of your face.

Something is wrong, here

[evilviper]

At least in the California job market, there is a dearth of qualified applicants. I've been on both sides of the hiring equation for years. The idea that you can't get a job, with over a decade of PL/SQL, Java and other programming, is just laughable, and tells me we must be missing something, here.

Are you missing all your teeth and refuse to get dentures? Are you only looking for jobs in a 10 mile radius of your house? Are you demanding an astronomical salary? Do you have obvious medical problems that make you incredibly unreliable from day-to-day? Are you just a mediocre programmer?

Your age certainly isn't preventing you from landing a new job. That said, it's certainly possible whatever those issues are, they could be age-related or age-compounded.

Re:A+ = F

[AK Marc]

Quoth the un-certified.

Then hear it from a certified person. I have A+, Network+, Server+, MCSE, CCNP, CCSP, CCDP, CCSE, and about 20 others. I'm a contractor, and for the State of Alaska, to touch a desktop (even to plug in a mouse) as a contractor, you must have A+. To touch a switch (even if just to move it in a rack while it's powered off) you must have Network+. To change tapes in a backup server, you must have Server+. I got those as a condition of employment for a consulting firm. I took 3 tests in 3 days, no studying, passed all three first try.

They are worthless, and I literally got A+ so I'd be "qualified" to plug in a mouse.

Been there, done that

[whitroth]

Ignore the kiddies and libertarian suckers' comments (I mean, if they were making that much, they wouldn't be wasting time posting here during the work day).

The real question is how long you have on your resume of you being out of work. The longer you're out, the less HR assholes want to talk to you. Back around '04 or '05, when I was *very* long "between positions", I applied for one that looked like it was written for me. Never heard anything, so I got annoyed enough to call the recruiter. She told me I "wasn't fresh".

That *really* pissed me off, so I asked her that if she took a year off to have a kid, would she never be employable again, becuase *she* "wasn't fresh"?

That took her back. She said she'd never thought of it that way, and actually put me in. Didn't get it, presumably because her opposite number thought the same way.

I also wrote a couple of articles I managed to get published in a mag. More on the resume. Did some F/OSS software, set it up as a project on sourceforge, and *that* went on the resume... and it also gave prospective employers examples of what I could do.

Anyway, one thing I did was to use some hair dye. Another thing was that a friend looked me up, told me he was starting a co, and had me do his co. website. I never got paid for that... but with his ok, the instant I made that website live, I had, on my resume, that I was "working" and the website as a bullet point. He was willing to answer calls that yes, I was working for him. Not that many months later, I finally started working again. Warning: you might have to work outside where you live, at least for a while (till you find something local), just so a) you can pay the bills, and b) have another point on the "yes, he's working now" check box.

A+ is useless. My son got it six or eight years ago, and no one would hire him, anyway. He went back for his 4-yr.

Best of luck.

                mark