The 50 Plus Male

The topic for this post was prompted by one of my recent tweets on Twitter–Sad sign of the times represented by the new oxymoron in financial markets: “jobless recovery;” explain that to the unemployed. No doubt many of you have heard this phrase uttered by various financial pundits, and have read newspaper articles on this subject matter. My hometown paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, had the following quote from the chief economic strategist of an investment firm in the Business Section of a recent Sunday edition: “What we’re seeing is a validation of the idea that a jobless recovery is perfectly on track.”

If you’re thinking that’s only one example, a locally circulated newspaper in my county, The Intelligencer, in the November 10th edition, lead the Business Section with an article entitled “Dow  jumps 204 to high for year.” Immediately to the left of this headline in the Money Wrap column, the first article was “J&J to lay off 174 in Lower Gwynedd” referring to Johnson & Johnson letting go of 174 employees at its research and development center in Lower Gwynedd, PA as part of its layoff of 8000 workers worldwide.

For the millions of people unemployed or employed but seeking new jobs/careers, this thinking has to hit you in the gut on many levels. If you’re a 50 plus year old male, it’s almost incomprehensible to conceive of a rising stock market while the unemployment levels reach highs not seen in over twenty years, especially considering that the approximate 10% figure currently reported does not include those  of us who are only working part-time or have given up looking for work altogether. Include these economic segments and the 10% unemployment figure almost doubles…

• Now I don’t mean to appear naive in a strict financial sense; obviously it’s all about the dollars. Joel Naroff, a well-known economist, said "…survival meant cutting costs as rapidly as possible and fulfilling orders with the fewest number of workers” in another recent  article on rising productivity and falling employment. It’s a given that controlling the cost-side of the ledger is an integral function of both nascent and well-established employers; but our economy is kidding itself if growth is to continue resulting from only exercising a sharp pencil or through M&A activity…what about organic growth, that is increasing actual sales. This is a surer sign of real growth that can lead to decreased unemployment levels, as companies would hopefully have the basis to expand and hire.

If you’re of that certain age (50 plus), a healthy economy and low unemployment levels always went hand-in-hand. It’s a new world out there that requires a new (not necessarily better in a moral sense) way of thinking.  I alluded to this in my September 24th post “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks.” Finding work and/or changing careers is particularly challenging for our age group and one of the more demeaning hazards so puzzling to us is the utter lack of courtesy encountered during the job application and interview process.

How many times have any of you dealt with one or all of the following roadblocks:

1. You get an email about a position from a recruiter who has come across your online resume/you reply stating your interest/the recruiter never gets back in touch with you.

2. You reach the first interview stage (now generally done via telephone)/are told you’ll hear from the company re: scheduling a second interview/you never hear from them again even though you’ve appropriately followed-up to the initial interview.

3. You have an in-person interview and come fully prepared, through conducting research on the prospective employer, with a list of pertinent questions that you hope will highlight your appeal/you’re not given a chance to ask all of your items because the interviewer has too many other people to see that day.

4. You just completed what you felt was a terrific initial in-person interview and your interviewer obviously responded in kind because he/she says" “I’ll call you in a couple of days to schedule the next interview so you can also meet (insert other employees of the prospective firm here)”/you again follow-up appropriately, but don’t receive the call or an email, so you continue to follow-up and the interviewer continues to pull a disappearing act…

What has happened to basic common courtesy?! I understand the sheer volume of applicants for a given position may preclude a prospective employer from responding the way they should, but sometimes even an automated response is better than none at all. To all employers I would simply state “try putting yourself on the other side of the equation.” Lack of decency and empathy are sadly the new order of the day, and while reflecting poorly on the prospective employer, I would extrapolate this to society at-large.

George Carlin had an extremely funny, witty routine on oxymorons; I would have loved to heard him riff on “jobless recovery”…

-Neal