Three Easy Ways

To Use The 100 Reasons/Benefits

For Hiring An Older Worker

By Lawrence M. Light, Creator Of eJobCoach.Com,

Author Of “An Insider’s Job Search eGuide: What Really Works To Find A New Job As An Older Worker“

At last count, there were over one-hundred-and- twenty-one (121) responses to “100 Benefits and Reasons To Hire Older Skilled  Workers” extremely popular article in InternsOverForty.com.

They ranged from generalizations like “Maturity to make sound decisions” to observations such as “Older employees have a greater value of time, and make better use of it. We know how to prioritize tasks. We have a sense of propriety. Have fewer personal crises and can be great at business crisis management.”

They include “Attitude! Attitude! Attitude!”; “The very basic rule in this field: no matter how brilliant and well-trained one can be, there simply is no substitute for experience. Don’t believe me? Ask a pilot. Better yet, ask its passengers.”; “Committed to company interests as opposed to personal interests.”

All well and good. Great comments. Very inspiring for older job seekers. It makes us all feel good about yourselves, doesn’t it? But the thrust of this article is how to make practical use of these wide-ranging job seeker comments in your own personal job search; how to separate them out into categories that make sense and are really useful; how to take action steps that will move you closer to a job.

So here are three easy ways that an older worker’s benefits to an prospective employer can be articulated:      

1. Read through all of these job seekers comments and extract those that have immediate impact on you because they resonate with your experience. Some of these will resonate, and some won’t. Write them down. Do this because they inspire you and because you can relate to them. Use them to inspire you emotionally. These are wonderful statements from other people that you can use during those terrible times, when you’re at your lowest, when you begin to wonder if you ever can find and get another job, to buck yourself up, to heighten your morale. That’s one very positive way to use them.

2. Next, take these comments that you believe apply to you, and begin to search your memory for an example of just how your many years of personal experience matches what it describes.

Here’s an example of what I mean: “…there simply is no substitute for experience…” You might say to yourself, “Well, I remember one time when our whole team was brought to a standstill because of a shortfall in funding. Because I had been there before, and was the only one who knew about these special funds, I knew there could be additional funds. I was able to convince management to release them, so we could continue on toward a successful conclusion.”

Write down as many of these memories, turning them into short stories (and achievements that you’ve probably forgotten) and incorporate them into your resume to make it into a powerhouse of a document. Prioritize them in order of importance so the most important, more striking ones, come before the more prosaic ones.

3. Keep these Older job seekers  “stories” as a series of notes that you can use when you go into an interview. People remember “stories” and, if you can keep them short and to the point, they’ll emphasize the points the article has made about the value of older workers.

By using the parts of the article and the responses of other people, in this way, you’ll have taken full advantage of the very essence, the very heart, of this article in a living, breathing way that will emphasize why you should be hired, in this most positive way, without sounding preachy or moralistic.     

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