Why Older Workers Need Career Changes
Do You Need to Change Careers Fast?
A lot of us boomers have been through this. We were educated and experienced in a certain career that just longer became vaiable for us for a variety of different reasons. There could be many reasons why years of schooling and decades of experience just did not help employment prospects. Some of them are caused by factors outside a person’s control, but some may just rise from changes in your own attitudes or situation.
Whatever the reason, older workers are likely to have responsibilities that are not so eaasy to get out of. A home mortgage, car payments, and other family members may rely upon our incomes. So even though a career change is called for, we know we do not have 4 years to spend in college in order to accomplish this goal.
Look at some reasons that older workers may look for quick career changes.
- Outsourcing or employee closings reduced the local demand for our job skill. We were just at a point in our lives where moving to another city or state was not a great option. We may have a settled life we love in our own city, a home that would be tough to sell, or other family members we need to take care of. There are lots of valid reasons why some people cannot be flexible about geographic location.
- An injury or infirmaty made our job a health hazard. This can happen to a lot of people, and not just older employees with physical or dangerous jobs. People with computer jobs can develop problems like carpal tunnel syndrome that make it painful to work on a keyboard all day.
- We just get burned out. You can work in a field for 20 years, and then just wake up one morning realizing you cannot stand the thought of spending one more day in your current line of work. This can be a very real problem that can cause depression. Sometimes we all just need a job change! The old adage – a change is as good as a rest – is so true as we look for midlife job changes.
So while we may all agree that it is, sometimes, more difficult for a 50+ person to seek out a new direction, we also agree that, sometimes, we just need to go for it anyway. And mature workers do have some strengths that younger workers may lack. Many boomers have successfully, and happily, navigated a new stream though.
Here are some things to consider if you are trying to figure out your next move.
- What have you always dreamed about doing? In my experience, people tend to do well when they do what they like to do! You do not have to hate your work. I admit that there is no job that does not have some less pleasant tasks involved in it, but it is really key to find work that is mostly satisfying. It may not be practical of a 60 year old to enter medical school to become a doctor, but there are other jobs in the medical field that have lower barriers to entry.
- What do you like about your current or former jobs? Again, think about your strengths or the tasks you did enjoy. For example, Tim was a computer systems analyst for 20 years after graduating with a computer science degree. He got tired of heavy duty programming, but found that he did enjoy training others in his tasks. After he was laid off because of outsourcing, he found that he could actually work as a technical trainer in a local community college because of his experience. He made up for a lower starting salary by downsizing his lifestyle a bit and taking some freelance programming jobs once in awhile. He found that when he could just write actual computer code a few times a month, and got to teach during the days, he begain to enjoy working with computers again.
- What is a realistic game plan? Get some ideas for jobs you think you could, and would want to, move into. Research the best moves you could make to actually realize your career move. And then sit down and start to take steps to get your boat into the next stream!