A fifth of workers Over 40 Fear Their Career Has Hit A ‘Brick Wall’ – And At 54 It’s All Over. That was the headline in the Daily Mail following research by Slater and Gordon Law Firm.

Edward Cooper, head of employment law at Slater & Gordon, said: ‘With people living longer than ever before, most expect to be able to work until they want to. Very few businesses enforce a retirement age but this research shows that many will still side line and isolate staff when they get to a certain age.’
The research says that many people don’t realise that age discrimination is against the law and 10% of the over 40s are the victims of jokes, 1 in 7 are more likely to be overlooked for promotion and their opinions are ignored.
I was interviewed on a couple of radio stations – Radio West Midlands with Mollie Green sitting in for Danny Kelly on Friday afternoon (around 3.30pm if you want to go for ‘listen again’ and on the LBC Saturday breakfast show with Andrew Castle.(Alas the interviews are no longer there).
In both interviews I focused on how people can still be successful in job search at 50+ and how to deal with difficult experiences.
You can’t assume you will get promotion just because you have worked for a company or in a job for x years.
Many of my clients are over 40 and tell me about the discrimination they have experienced and the difficulties they face in finding a job. I appreciate it can be hard but sometimes they don’t help themselves, and part of this is down to the stories they tell themselves.
The importance of positive self talk
Far too many people say things like – ‘I’ll never get a job’ and ‘No one is going to employ me as I’m too old’. They don’t realise about the self fulfilling prophecy. When we tell ourselves things like this our brain then seeks out evidence to support this. So it is much better to say things liek ‘i#m looking forward to getting to interview’.
The need to keep up to date
One problem I notice is that many older people believe that having qualified 10 or more years ago is enough and haven’t kept their skills updated. Recently I spoke with someone looking to return to marketing but who had no experience of using social media (she wasn’t even on LinkedIn) and didn’t think she needed to.  So we spoke about how an employer would expect her to have a degree of knowledge and a strategy to increase her knowledge – to write a discussion paper on the benefits of different social media sites for a target audience.
Brought to you by Denise Taylor, career coach and chartered psychologist with Amazing People. Denise is regularly featured as an expert in the press and is the author of 7 books including ‘How To Get A Job In A Recession’

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Published On: October 1st, 2014 / Categories: Uncategorized /

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