Job Search Tips for Those who are 50 or above and Returning to the Labor Market from a Career Break.
Every year, thousands upon thousands of latest sets of graduates are released into the ever-growing labor market. The number of new intakes always greatly exceed the number of those that are exiting the job market. Take for example college professors. How many college professors retire yearly? Place that data side by side the number of students such professor’s lecture in his or her final year in service. The answers would be in the hundreds or probably thousands. And that gives you a perfect picture of how much the labor market is saturated now.
Each day, these high numbers of participants in the labor market apply for jobs, those they are qualified for, overqualified for as well as those they are even under qualified to take on. They do this with most of them holding highly competitive resumes and profiles. As such it is quite difficult for those that are fresh into the labor market or those that are returning from a career break to enter the workforce and breakthrough with mouthwatering jobs.
It is difficult, we say, not at all impossible. Of course there is always the odds that you can get selected out of the hundreds or thousands that are applying to fill in the very few available vacancies in your field. However, to be realistic, at all times, these odds are greatly not in your favor especially when you belong to the earlier mentioned categories of people in the labor market. Thus, to even stand a chance against those discouraging odds, one of the important things to do is to be consistent.
If you are aged 50 or above, and you decide it is time you dived back into the job hunting pool, do not feel like you have no hope of getting a sweet job on your return. Of course you have to have the basic orientation that is a must-have even for fresh graduates. You have a very strong presence of career helping or job hunting platforms like LinkedIn and the likes of it, you have a well and tastefully designed resume, and you obviously keep abreast of vacancies and attend those interview calls.
Those are as we said, the basics. But to get that needed edge over your thousand competitors, especially as someone that is 50 or above and is returning from a career break, there are other things you need to know as well as do. Here, you would be given facts/tips that will aid you on this journey.
Expand Your Social Connection
Your return to the labor market can be made a whole lot easier if you rekindle the connections you have made in your social circle. Of course, your social circle includes old friends, former colleagues and even your former bosses or employers. Most of these people will most likely still be in the workforce and as such have active connections that could be of help to you. Added advantage is that they would have even progressed on the hierarchical scale at the workplaces. This means that someone that was your colleague at work might have taken over from the old boss that was there when you left. Referrals from such people will sure go a long way when your potential employers are taking that long hard look at your resumes as they interview you.
Realistic Job Search
You are 50 or above. Not saying that you are frail or fragile, but you are not 30 years old and as such, you are not as strong as you used to be. To face the facts, you are not as strong as you were when you took that career break. Therefore, when searching for a job to return to, be practical, be realistic. Look for jobs that you can do and retire from without having to spend your retirement entitlements on ailments that resulted from overworking yourself.
It goes without saying that you should know why you want to return to the workforce. Is it to have something to do? Are you taking the job as a hobby? Or are you in search of an additional income? This will help in reaching decisions as to the type of job you will search and apply for.
