Middle age dreaming

Posted to Monash Weekly (27/5/2013) on 30/5/2013 at 10:21 PM
Commenting on "Middle age dreaming"
http://www.monashweekly.com.au/story/1525014/middle-age-dreaming/

Don't change for the sake of change. If you need your present job to bring home the bacon, make sure you secure a new one first before resigning. The more senior you are in position or in age, the more difficult for you to find another one. The job market is diminishing rapidly recently.

You may have years of experience and a string of degrees, but so have many people. There is no guarantee that after leaving an unhappy workplace and those workmates you can't get along with, you will land in Xanadu. Every workplace has its own culture and does things differently. You may still turn out to be a square peg for a round hole.

If you are unemployed or thinking of taking that great leap, do not just enrol in a course and hope that the piece of paper you get at the end can fulfil your dream. You may be disappointed, disillusioned and regretted to have wasted days of useless training.

When choosing a course, make sure the skill and qualification gained WILL BE useful and relevant to the job you WILL BE seeking. Scoring top marks are not prerequisites for suitability of a job. Australia is very short of tradespeople, and a vocational qualification may be worth more than a degree at present.

Keeping mature aged workers in jobs

Posted to Letters to Editor, Monash Weekly 8/4/2011

Keeping mature aged workers in jobs

The biggest problem why many qualified mature-age workers can't find jobs is that many recruitment companies and human resource departments are run by people who don't know about the nature of the positions advertised. They look for perfect match. Whoever can write an application with lots of BS that match the selection criteria will stand a chance for an interview, otherwise the application will be thrown into the non-Recycle bin.

There is no joy for a grey-hair applicant after getting a phone call to go for an interview. The next hurdle is to face a younger, feeling insecure manager who doesn't want anyone that can present a threat to his/her promotion or even replacing him/her in the future.

Many job advertisements are written by graduates who have just finished a TAFE / uni course, using terms or jargon that many people can't understand.
How many of these terminologies can a mature-age experienced person including managers who have been working for decades with small companies "decode"? e.g. 2IC, ICC, CCT, CO, MO, L&D, L&M, PD, KPI, KRA, 360 Degree feedback, 6 Thinking Hats, etc.

Who wants to appear like an idiot in front of an interviewer bombarding the applicant with these out-of-the world terminologies? How many courses do we expect the mature-age unemployed to attend to upgrade their qualification or to re-train? Who do you think the trainers are and what sort of qualification do they trainers have?

Do I sound cynical? Sure I do, I'm one of the unfortunate candidates.

To add salt to the wound, I'm more qualified and experienced than my students and yet if one of my students and I apply for the same position, guess who will get the job? Not me, for sure! Unfortunately, I'm over qualified – haha!

Will you take a Jack of many trades, and master of some like me? I love to hear from you!