Over-50

Hospitality Industry: Hring based on Emotional Intelligence [EI]

The hospitality industry has jobs.  That's because it is a labor-intensive business with high turnover.  After all, it takes a person to greet guests and manage the first desk.

The opportunities range from selling two weeks in mini apartments in extended-stay motels to arranging travel tours to China.  Usually age matters less than the ability to demonstrate high emotional intelligence or a sincere interest in the customer.

How to demonstrate that in the resume and cover letter?  Provide examples of how you went the distance to figure out what a customer needed or wanted and then provided that service or product.  Emphasize good listening skills. 

Language is everything in how you present yourself on paper, in email, over the phone, and in-person.  You can pick up the language that dominates the hospitality industry by pouring over the help-wanted ads.  Notice what language occurs repeatedly.  Then make those terms part of your credentials.

Merck Lessons: Laying off 12,000, hiring in emerging markets

Merck announced that it will be laying off 12,000 and that about 40% of those cuts will be in the U.S., reports FIERCE PHARMA.  The trigger has been drugs going off patent.  Simultaneously, Merck will be doing some hiring in emerging economies where use of prescription drugs is growing.

The lesson here is obvious: Go global.

That doesn't mean we have to run off to China and scout up insiders to partner with to create business opportunities.  Rather, bit by bit we can break open to emerging markets.  That in itself can lead to opportunities.

Several months ago I was assigned to ghostwrite blog posts on the high GDP growth rate projected for emerging nations such as China and Brazil.  The mean could be about 8%.  Yesterday, the Commerce Department in the U.S. reported the U.S. GDP for 2Q is 1.3%.

That got me thinking.  To get a feel for emerging markets I pored over the international sections on Craigslist.  Without even caring about what the assignments might pay, I applied for a large number of them in communications.  I did land work.  I also made contacts.  And I'm no longer stuck playing in the U.S. sandbox.   Would I relocate to an emerging market?  That's possible. 

With the legal sector downsizing, some placement offices at law schools are posting help-wanted from outsourcing firms in India.  That niche has gone from simply accepting and doing routine tasks to process re-engineering, that is analyzing how even complex work can be broken down into simple components which can be farmed out around the world.  Those with a legal background could get in on the ground floor in India doing process re-engineering.  Some newbie JDs balk that the pay is lousy for that.  But think of the knowledge base, including learning how to transact business in India.

Gandhi, MLK, JFK: Our Heroes Were Emotional Messes

When we Baby Boomers were young, Gandhi, King, and Kennedy seems so solid.  Now, we find out that they were emotional messes, veering from depression to mild mania.  But, in his new book "A First-Rate Madness," psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi says that's not a bad thing.  Being mentally unstable is a must-have, asserts Ghaemi, for leadership in times of crisis.

"A First-Rate Madness" could reframe mental illness, particularly bipolar, as an asset, if it doesn't wind up killing the person.  About a fifth of bipolars wind up checking out.

Oprah After Oprah: Lessons for Baby Boomers in Transition

Oprah after the talk show "Oprah" isn't doing so hot.  Traffic to her website http://oprah.com is down by a half, reports NEW YORK POST.  Jenny McCarthy will likely be shopping her talk show widely, instead of staying in Oprah's Harpo sandbox.  We all are familiar with her struggle to find an identity and audience for OWN.

The lessons here are clear: Baby Boomers in transition have to be willing to change, big time.  Incremental nips and tucks on persona and MO won't do it.  An example of someone who understands this is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Unlike Oprah, Clinton can move from one role to another.  The latter is always a step up.

Medicare: Will We Have to Wait Until Age 67?

The aging should be worried.  Both President Barack Obama and U.S. House Speaker John Boehner have agreed on one thing:  The age for Medicare eligibility should be raised.  They're both thinking in the ballpark of age 67, reports POLITICO.

 

Over-50 students in college up 17%

The number of us back taking courses in college is up 17%, reports SMART MONEY.  Between 2007 and 2009, we began heading back to school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.   The question is: Will the money we pay for that education yield a decent return on investment?

There is no right answer to that.  That's because our individual situations are so unique and the marketplace is so volatile.  Therefore, we each have to investigate our investment on a a case-by-case basis. 

There's the man who had never finished his college degree.  Several employers, where he applied for both full-time and contract work, recommended that he get that piece of paper.  He's doing that.  Everyone in the loop sees that as a good investment.

Then there is the restless 50-year-old who wants a fresh start.  Given all the aged, the decision is made to study for a degree in gerontology.  However, that person, even with the degree, is competing with those with more actual experience who might be better connected and younger.

For most of us over-50, we can learn a lot free at MIT's online site.  We can take low-cost courses a la carte at the community college.  Sure, we all toy with the fantasy of settling back into the academic womb.   However, that's expensive space these days. 

Native English Speaker? - Go Global

Growth in GDP is happening in the emerging economies, ranging from China to Brazil.  Yet, too many of us Baby Boomers have remained stuck pursuing earning our living only in the U.S.  Here growth will likely come to 2% for 2011.  That's unfortunate.  English is the language of commerce and most of us are native speakers.  That, in itself, is marketable abroad.

Yet, thanks to online bulletin boards such as Craigslist, it's easy to search for assignments or even jobs beyond the U.S.  For example, writers - whose skill is becoming a commodity in the U.S. - might answer this ad on Craigslist's China section.  Recently, I replied to one for a travel writer and am not doing work for a vendor whose business includes China.  Previously, thanks to Craigslist, I had done work for organizations and individuals in Canada, Costa Rica, and Canada.  The technology of Paypal does all the currency conversions.

No, there's not a lot of money in this, at least to begin with.  But as we build our global know-how, contacts, and projects we might be able to negotiate what we expected to be paid before the Great Recession.  In addition, we might get a few good trips out of this.

Out of Work? You might stay just that way

Being out of work has become the primary obstacle to getting hired.  THE NEW YORK TIMES confirms that there is a stigma against those who have been jobless for more than a few months.  Increasingly help-wanted specify being employed as a requirement.

There is a way out: Get a job, any job.  That is what I have been evangelizing since my own downward trajectory in 2003 Download Geezerguts.  Nothing gets us a job like having a job.  Even before this prejudice about unemployment, being employed gave us the edge because we presented ourselves from a position of strength.  Our body language was that of the employed, not that of a wounded soul without a job.

In this volatile marketplace, it seems foolish to worry that taking a job "beneath you" will screw up your career history.  Taking any job will bring in income and become a platform for what could be next.

Of course, it's a big mistake to treat unemployment as a vacation.  A man near 60 years of age, after receiving a promotion in an IT company, was laid off.  He took a three-month time-out at his vacation home down south.  When he returned to start his job search he was already a marked man.  He now had three months of joblessness to account for.  

What kinds of survival jobs are available? Security guard, companion to the elderly, errand-runner, dog walker, part-time administrative staff in small business, and cleaning person, both residential and commercial.  From that experience could come a fresh career path.  One man who lost his grocery business gained a residential cleaning one after doing that for a few months.

Almost Golden: What held us back?

Most of us over-50 have finally gotten it:  We will be working, as an employee, contract worker, or entrepreneur, into our 70s and 80s.  Some of the reality comes from brute economics.  We can't support ourselves on what pensions, social security, and sale of our assets would provide.  Some from the capitalism stigma against not being employed.  So, with time on our side, we look over our careers. 

The lion's share of us started out Almost Golden.  We were scholarship winners, leaders, top athletes.  Then we went on to be classified as high-potential employees.  Or the businesses we started did better than they were supposed to.  But along the way, obviously something happened.  Today we are not golden.  We want to figure out why and correct that deficit.  After all, unlike all previous generations, we have time to change.  Given the  competition for paid work, we have incentive to do a 180, if needed.

 
For me, my therapist, coach, and mystic decided it had been a combo platter of unregulated rage and lack of self confidence.  Killer, it was.  Yet, once I embraced that flaw, looked at it closely, and said, yup, that derailed the train, I never experienced rage again.  When a strong emotion surfaced that had a part of anger, I could stop, look at it, and then go through my menu of newly acquired coping skills to defuse the force.  That in itself has given me confidence.  At age 66, I finally believe in myself.

For a lawyer I coached it was always the inability to let go of the past.  When he was an associate at a brandname law firm he could not accept negative feedback.  After all, he had been the smartest in law school.  When the law firm gave him the boot instead of awarding him partnership, he kept gazing back to the $300K he had been making.  In the next law firm he made less and gave less.  That ended.  Unfortunately I was not able to help him and terminated the coaching.  He is still fixated on $300K.  He cannot start over at $80K in another line of work.  He is one of the very few who don't experience that internal paradigm shift.

Then there had been a psychotherapist who couldn't master fear.  His mind and research skills were and are such that he could have produced breakthrough findings in the field of guilt feelings.  The work he did was good enough to get him tenure.  Until he hit 60, he lived with that.  Then both he and his devoted spouse asked what had happened.  The answer was obviously that he had stayed within the box of accepted theory.  Now?  He is taking a sabbatical to attempt original work. 

In his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses," University of Chicago professor David Galenson proves out that there are those of us who don't find our way until our 50s or 60s.  Given our longer life spans, that period of trying out new things could extend into our 70s.  Then we find our way and there is no stopping us. 

I'm looking forward to the joy of accomplishing what I couldn't before but have a shot at now.

Joan Avagliano: Universe Smiles on This Baby Boomer

Joan Avagliano is, like 76 million of us, a now-aging Baby Boomer.  Time has made our once totally confident generation one that is questioning our assumptions.   Overall, that has made us more marketable.  Generation Y stands rigid in its optimism and belief in the pile-on of degrees.  And Generation Y has become one of serial interns, not paid professionals.

I met Avagliano when she in her late 30s.  Marriage and then the birth of her twin boys were still in her future.  So was the house in New Jersey.  But they all came into the picture.  At the time I was freelancing for her boss public relations leader Bob Dilenschneider.

Now, over-50, Avagliano probably wonders now and then if there will be age impediments should she search for a new job.   Currently, she is Chief of Staff at the Dilenschneider Group in Manhattan.   Yes, she rose in the ranks. 

Another issue on her mind might be that she has had the same employer for a long time.  In a volatile era, that's unusual, so much so that it could be construed as a matter to be addressed in a job interview.  Of course, 15 years ago, such a record for staying-put would have been a plus.  When I was among the young and restless, my lack of staying-power was questioned. 

Another subject on Avagliano's mind might be that she is based in New Jersey, not Manhattan.  Employers's first pick is usually among those from a Manhattan-based pool. Before she married, she had an apartment near the UN.

For a while, Avagliano likely has enough job security that she won't be searching for another job.  Her boss has been heavily covered in the media for his appearance on Fox, indirectly defending Rupert Murdoch.   In public relations, such attention can bring in new business.  Yes, the universe has smiled on her. 

But what if she wanted to prepare for a job search?  Here are some tips:

Blog on how older professional women can retrofit their persona as well as their performance art for a marketplace with a speeded-up metabolism.   This blog would also help her employer's branding.

Expand work history. This can be accomplished through consulting work, doing part-time assignments on weekends, being appointed to boards of directors, and volunteering.

Consider moving back to Manhattan.  Soon enough the twins will be in college.  Employers fear a commuting employee will be a weary warrior.

Observe.  That genius on trends, Yogi Berra noted that you can notice a lot by watching.