“Too old to find work and too young to retire”
Okay, let’s count the many ways that this New York Times story chapped my hide.
1) If you don’t have a job and want one, your full-time job is looking for work. If you have “zero planned, not a thing” on your calendar, then you need to plan to be looking for employment.
2) If you’re a sales guy, all the credentials you need are results. A certificate in sales would be worthless. Just show people the numbers of how you grew your business(es) and explain how you did it.
3) The women on the online dating site didn’t dump you because you’re unemployed, they moved on because you’re a self-pitying whiner.
4) The Times reporter bizarrely claims of the guy’s good references: “None of that matters in this economy.” Huh? Of course good references matter. But they have to be coupled with a clever search for work in the most ripe areas for opportunity. Why is this reporter so keen to make this guy a victim of unseen forces?
5) The guy claims that at his only in-person interview out of 600 applications (something in the milk ain’t clean about those metrics, but let’s just believe him for the sake of argument), his response when asked about salary was: “Whatever you’re paying, I’ll take it. I understand it’s a different world now, I can adapt.” Since when is desperation a winning sales tactic? This quote alone convinces me that this guy can’t even sell himself, let alone products.
6) Yeah, it’s courteous for your job applications to be acknowledged. But if they’re not, you should follow up. Don’t just kvetch to the nearest reporter about how unfair it all is. Tenacity is essential to selling. Reminder: THIS IS A SELF-PROCLAIMED SALES PRO.
7) He wanders aimlessly around NYC and goes to a nearby diner for the $2.99 special just to be around people. Wouldn’t working his contacts and going to industry events to meet potential job leads be a GREAT way to be around people? Call me crazy, but it seems obvious that you’re not going to get a job shooting the shit with diner flies or window shopping in Union Square.
8) So he’s writing novels in his spare time. Huh. Maybe he could be a writer, then. Maybe he could take some classes. (I took two writing classes at the same time for five weeks earlier this summer, while working full-time, traveling, and having a social life. It’s fantastic, fun, and gives you the incentive of deadlines to keep you on track.) Rather than hoping some random agent is going to bother to read his work, love it, and get him a book deal, he should be honing his skills, participating in writing groups to get critiques (and to learn to critique others, so he can make his own writing better), finding out what is in demand in the writing market, making contacts, and moving toward his goal. He’s doing none of that, according to this piece.
I’m not saying it’s fun or easy to be out of work at any age, and I can especially feel for someone who’s older. Today, I happened to meet a guy in his late 50s or early 60s who’d just come from a job interview - he was wearing these black pleather shoes with Velcro straps and a tie that reached his crotch. It broke my heart. But at least he was pounding the pavement, and knows that his full-time job now is finding a full-time job. I don’t think he’d have had a chance to stop and give a sob story to the Times.
Filed under: Life
Hate to be rude, it could happen to me tomorrow but you know what?
That guy needs to get off his ass
Start Volunteering
Get involved, start helping others,the rewards will come.
Most of all the self pity has got to stop.
Pat, that’s a very good suggestion. If you’re looking for work in a specific field, offer to volunteer your services part-time for a non-profit so that you have the work experience (not just dead time) on your CV and so you can stay in the game. I’m sure there are a lot of charities and other organizations that would appreciate a sales pro volunteering to do some fundraising for them.
He can sell “ice to Eskimos” but he can’t sell himself?
Yeah… that’s believable. Having recently interviewed a long series of incredibly bad sales people, it’s *astounding* how many people call themselves sales people and can’t sell themselves at all.
My favorite was the guy kept telling us how creative he was in coming up with sale solutions, and when I asked him for an example, he couldn’t come up with one. That was the same guy who, when asked to give an example of how he closed a big deal — start to finish — gave an example where he failed to close a big deal, and his former employer went under because of that.
Very convincing.
Mike, how could you let such a valuable candidate pass you by? Maybe he and this guy can commiserate over how much the world is against them over some $2.99 fried eggs.
Oh, I’m so glad you wrote this, that article bugged the hell out of me too.
There is more new stuff to learn than ever before, but unfortunately older (and I’m including people my age here- 16 yrs younger than the guy in the piece) folks often cling to their totally unrealistic early-adulthood ideas about how much & what needs doing in order to stay in the market.
It’s more competitive than 20 years ago! But always the excuses, the trashing of internets, the ageism-card… what can you do, some people just don’t want help. Change is scary! Sometimes even scarier than bankruptcy, apparently :-(
When I lost my job in Youngstown everyone in IT kept telling “good luck finding a job”
HA there’s no luck, a job isn’t going to walk up and punch you in the face.
I’ve just got around to clicking the link and reading the article, and Jackie, you’ve said everything I would have wanted to say about it.
Pat - great suggestion. Volunteering would keep him busy, keep his skills current, and help him to realise that he’s way down the list of people worth feeling sorry for.