Re: Aging out was RE: job-hunt weirdness

[Elaine Garnet <2egarnet -at- rogers -dot- com>]

Very good plan, Sarah. I always urge younger women to keep their  
careers up when they get married and freelancing is one of those  
options. I should have been so lucky. After staying home to raise my  
son past toddlerhood, my husband divorced me. This gap somehow made me  
look non-technical and combined with being older in a market of young  
grads reduced me to minimum wage or slightly better jobs. All of these  
jobs were boring and I faced a lot of age harassment from younger men  
- not in a teasing manner but in a nasty, mean sort of way. Such an  
experience is enough to seriously diminish a person's self worth. So,  
I was pretty damaged by the time I picked myself up and went out on my  
own. Now, I'm doing better than my engineer ex-husband and my clients  
seem to value my work. Incidentally, my ex lost his job when he was 50  
and had to go out on his own as well. No-one would hire him despite  
his experience. Poetic justice? Or, a life event that we may all expect?

Thanks for the link, Mike.

On 10-Jul-09, at 2:14 AM, Mike Starr wrote:

> In light of this conversation, I stumbled across this via Twitter:
>
> Job search over 50: Unique challenges, unique opportunities
>
> http://www.kristidaeda.com/2009/07/09/job-search-over-50-unique-challenges-unique-opportunities/
>
> or
>
> http://tinyurl.com/ncxhp4
>
> Mike
> -- 
> Mike Starr                            WriteStarr Information Services
> Technical Writer  -  Online Help Developer  -   Technical Illustrator
> Graphic Designer    -    Desktop Publisher   -       MS Office Expert
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>
> Sarah Stegall wrote:
>> Dunno about Canada, but about the worst thing you can do in Northern
>> California is brag about (or even mention) being "long-in-the-tooth".
>> Kiss of death out here.
>>
>> I watched my highly competent, smart, professional mother, with  
>> years of
>> experience and business savvy, get involuntarily "retired" from
>> technical writing for the sin of being older than the people she was
>> interviewing with for a job. The last job she had, she was actually  
>> told
>> by her manager that if he'd known her age he would never have  
>> considered
>> her for the job. She did all the usual--wrote her resume to eliminate
>> about ten years of experience, concealed the date of her graduation
>> (even dropped a degree), dyed her hair, dressed younger. None of it
>> worked. After she got laid off, she never again got past an initial
>> interview.
>>
>> I figure I'm in my last or next to last job as an employee; if and  
>> when
>> I leave this one, I have at best a 50/50 chance of being hired full  
>> time
>> somewhere because I am too old. I'm keeping my freelance skills up,  
>> and
>> hoping my husband keeps his job so that his benefits can cover us.
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Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

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