If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can even subscribe by email! Thanks for visiting!
Those who know me personally are always shocked, the first time they meet me, by my youthful good looks and appearance.
“Surely,” they say, “you’re not older than 25?”
To which I can only reply that the optometrists are just down the road and awaiting their visit. And to stop calling me Shirley.
Of course, in an ‘age-ist’ society like the one I — and probably you — live in, being over 25 is a sure sign of being on the slippery slope to irrelevance. Just as middle-aged women once complained (and perhaps still do) that they are ‘invisible’, so too middle-aged men are very often seen as less ’sharp, focused and go-getting’ than the 20- or early 30-somethings.
For many men and women, retiring at 55 happens not out of choice but out of enforced redundancy and the inability to find suitable alternative employment (unless you consider standing at the front of a supermarket and smiling at brattish ‘darlings’ and their irritable mothers a smart career move).
Thankfully, some Australian Federal Government bod somewhere was able to rustle up enough support to launch a Government-sponsored website for the ‘Over 40s’. Having seen firsthand how inefficient some Government websites can be (one I know cost a Government in the vicinity of $8million dollars and was never completed because the contractors went broke; four years later there’s still no website), I was especially relieved to be asked to help out and offer advice to Adage, a privately owned site that helps the ‘Over 40s’ find suitable use for their considerable skills and experience.
They’ve only recently started up and are looking for quality candidates with which to fill their books. If you are over 40, an Australian resident and looking for a change, you could do far worse than visit Adage and join their books. Much like Seek (the premier job board in Australia), there’s a wealth of resources and tips, plus discounts on courses and other good stuff.
But unlike Seek, Adage is geared totally for people who are over 25. So their recruiter teams have sorted out relationships with employers who understand and value the contributions that we ‘Over 40s’ can bring.
The ‘aging workforce’ is a growing market and I’m delighted to not only be a part of it but to help a new industry member help people like me match up with employers who ‘get it’.
{ 0 comments… add one now }