If you’re a Gen X who in 2017 has been trying to find a job, chances are, your search has been discouraging. You have the education, the chops, the leadership experience, the training, the network, the killer resume that is virtually screaming of how brilliant you are and the incredible change you’ve brought to every organization you’ve ever worked at. You are the bridge between the old school, military run corporations of the past and ALL the technology that was created by your peers. You’ve volunteered. You’ve presented. You’ve published. And yet, no one will hire you.
The stories I hear, from clients, friends and acquaintances, most with master’s degrees and even technical certifications, go something like this:
* Applied to over 200 jobs and not one offer.
* Applied to so many jobs I’ve lost count.
* Applied to over 300 jobs and each interview I get they tell me I’m overqualified.
* Applied for 344 jobs since March with no offers. Frustrating but true.
* Applied to over 500 jobs, all in 2017.
One common denominator these professionals all share? Each one is a Gen Xer.
Some have even quit looking. Jen Torbeck Merrill, with whom I grew up with who is currently a wife and mom of two energetic boys, graciously allowed me to use her name in the piece. When I surveyed around asking how many jobs fellow Gen Xers have applied to this year, here’s what she shared. “None. Because I determined it to be pointless for someone out of the mainstream job pool for 15+ years, and I decided to just be my own boss. Hours are great, benefits are miserable.” Her profession? “Go with self-employed spinner of plates. Or flutist/teacher/writer/homeschooler.”
It’s not news that there’s now more Millennials in the work force than there are Baby Boomers. So we, the narrow waistline on the hourglass between the two populations, didn’t matter when we were getting started in our careers in the ’90s and once again we’ve become irrelevant. Corporations must maximize profits, so naturally, they market to Gen Y. And they want a workforce that represents this ever-growing population, so they recruit them — not only do the c-level execs need help understanding how to market to this population that’s disrupting just about every industry, from home ownership to tv watching to golf, but boards know they can also hire them for far less money than a Gen Xer in the same position.
I’ve read hundreds of job descriptions over the past couple of years — it’s my job to be current on — and I’m finally cracking the code of when organizations are looking for younger talent but can’t legally say that. Here are some red flags:
Inflated job titles that require only 3-5 years of industry experience – Millennials want quick advancement while we Gen Xers earned team management positions after a decade in the field.
Casual vocabulary like “fun” peppered in and an informal tone – Millennials don’t like to be sold to in a traditional way and companies are bending over backwards trying to have a conversation with them.
Words like “digital marketing,” “social media” and “digital landscape” – Many firms have made the assumption that only Millennials understand anything that has to do with technology; to them, youth spells connection.
It’s not to say that a company that has the above in their job description won’t hire a Gen Xer for the role. But HR has also strategically signaled that they want an employee that most resembles their desired customer.
So is this all gloom and doom? Not necessarily. It all just means that we have to work ten times harder than those that came before us or after to earn our keep. This, of course, is not new. We’ve always been hard workers. Now we have be to much smarter about our efforts. Here’s some ways we can all help ourselves.
1. Be aggressive about using our network. – We’ve been building it for decades. From our first Rolodex, to our current LinkedIn profiles, if we’ve been doing it right, we know A LOT of people, across all the generations. Now’s not the time to be bashful. Start sending your resume to anyone and everyone who may be able to help you. And when others come to you for help, because you may know someone they do, you do the same for them.
2. Research the company. – And I mean do your due diligence. Look at the board. Look at the website. Does anyone look like you? If not, they are not going to hire you or they are not going to promote you. Instead, carve out the time to find organizations that are known for hiring employees that are your age, your gender, your ethnic background. You’ll fit in because you’ll already look like one of the family.
3. Shift gears into an in-demand industry and tell the truth. – Rose Vales Regalado, also a wife and mother, does account management in the insurance field. Her story? “I applied for two jobs after a 5.5 year break. “I was offered positions for both.” Her strategy? “I think the best way to go about it was to be 100% honest. I did use a cover letter for each job, as well as trying my best to make a ‘modern’ resume. It really threw me for a loop to see what kind of resumes were out there! I ended up declining both positions purely based on logistics. A few months later, one of the employers approached me with another position in the firm that was more aligned with what I was looking for in a job. So happy it turned out that way!”
4. Pull a Trojan Horse. – A Business Development Manager I know shared his success story. “My most recent job hunt I easily applied to 300-400 at least. Resulted in four offers. In the beginning I didn’t have a lot of success (be)cause I couldn’t get through the resume screening process. Then I started applying for jobs I was waaay over-qualified for and got lots of interviews. Hit rate was probably 60%. They all said the same thing at that point. ‘You’re overqualified for this job but let me put you over to another position that you would be a great fit for.’ That resulted in me getting to interview for jobs that were(n’t) even posted!
5. Prune that Resume, – Remove jobs from pre-1997. Remove college and grad school graduation years. Remove the word “cell” from your contact info – we all know that’s the phone number you’ve listed. Remove skills, computer languages and details that have nothing to do with today’s work world. Remove that you know how use MS Office. This is the baseline of skills you’re expected to know. And keep everything on your resume brief. Brevity is your BFF.
I’m fortunate in that I’ve had the amazing experience to learn from bosses that are both Boomers and Gen Xers. I’ve also now taught over 1000 biz students, most of whom are Millennials, also fantastic teachers of life in the present. So, of course I realize that perpetuating the generational divides doesn’t make anyone win. Gen Y has its own labor market / student loans woes and many Boomers lost everything in the Recession. And, yet, over the past 10 years, given what I’ve seen, heard and read in the classroom, with clients, among friends and all the news stories of the days, I know full well that the baton has officially been passed over.
We, raised on MTV, John Hughes and Grunge only had it for that brief period of the 00 decade. Last month, even AOL Instant Messenger, launched on those floppy disks that killed access to our landline phones for hours, went away.
This isn’t some sort of pity party. Rather, it’s the ongoing acceptance of a biting reality.
Alexsandra (Alex) Sukhoy, a globally networked creative and business professional, is founder of Creative Cadence LLC. Her career coaching and marketing skills have resulted in numerous success stories for her clients. Her 5-Star business book, Date Your Career: The Longest Relationship of Your Life, is now available on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle. Follow Alex on Twitter: @creativecadence