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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?"
Definitely get into asbestos removal. Asbestosis won't hit for 30 years.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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 :\
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.
20 minutes into the future
A+ is useless except for getting past those clueless 25 year old HR drones.
*"Cogito Ergo Liberalis"*
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.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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.
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.