I’m a fellow of a certain age, not over the hill but I’m a little closer to sixty than I am to fifty. I’ve had a reasonable career in public service and, having jettisoned that for big change in course, I’m now looking for some work to keep me active and to earn a little money.

How hard can that be?

Harder than I’d ever imagined.

It’s a tough employment market out there, I know that. It’s not that I have to work to survive, nor am I seeking to pick up where I left off when changing course. I don’t demand a big salary and I’m pretty flexible about what I’ll do. But why is it so hard to get back into work?

I’ve lost count of the number places that I’ve applied to work; I couldn’t tell you where I have current applications, either, so many have I sent off (in to the ether it would appear). I can, though, count the number of acknowledgements of application on one hand, and I have recorded just one “Thanks but no thanks” letter. The number of interviews offered remains resolutely at zero.

There’s no doubt that my Canadian style resumes and cover letters may have been somewhat off the mark, particularly when I started. They’ve been quite dense, partly because I have much to say and partly because I’m honest, and I think that may have been an issue. I need more white space and more bullet points.

I don’t have a University Degree, which doesn’t help. Its seems that a degree is the key to a lot of jobs, and the fact that I’ve managed thus far without one seems to elude the people making the decisions. My education is from a foreign country, too, and that has some scare value I’m sure.

The biggest resume issue is, though, my age. There are laws about age discrimination but recruiters seem to routinely ignore them and we oldies get automatically overlooked. I’d heard that companies are looking for “thirty year hires” but I really don’t see that. Most companies plan in the short term these days so a three year hire is more likely, but it’s still no more advantageous to the old folk it seems. You’re not supposed to put a date of birth on a resume, with good reason, but when you’re asked to give your educational graduation years then it’s not too hard to work out just how old that applicant is. It might be better if job adverts said that people over fifty need not apply, but that would be illegal, so the hirers just use other means to filter us out.

The issues I’ve raised thus far are only part of the equation, of course. Some of the employers in this part of the world need a really good kick up the backside when it comes to recruiting quality people.

There is a major employer in town who is very prescriptive about requirements and experience needed to get a job with them. Close packed text lists the specific requirements, so tight and so thorough that the only people who could possibly comply would already be working at that company. If that’s the case, why advertise externally? One, public, employer seems to demand such a high level of educational excellence for their new recruits that I wonder how they get anyone at all, especially on the mundane salaries they offer.

Another bugbear is the vocational qualification. There are many healthcare jobs in town but all of them, however menial, require some certificate or diploma obtained at a college somewhere in the Province. I’m all for professional standards, but it rather limits the intake of good new staff when you restrict recruitment to only those who have gone through the vocational education mill.

The biggest and most difficult thing to bear is the wall of silence once you’ve e-mailed that resume. Rarely an acknowledgement and almost never a written rejection; it’s maddening. Certainly, most employers do say that they won’t contact you if you’ve not been selected for interview but, frankly, that’s just not good enough. All applicants put in spades of work when making an application and most prospective employers won’t even acknowledge it, let alone let you know if you don’t make the cut. How hard is it to despatch a two line rejection e-mail? To me it shows what employers think about the great unwashed who are trying to get work; absolutely nothing.

I will round off this diatribe by highlighting one very good experience and one very bad experience. Firstly the bad:

A family member (not me) had been called to an interview for a student’s summer job at a publicly funded body. The call for interview took considerably longer than was promised but it arrived and the person concerned pitched up on time. He answered questions, correctly by the sound of it, and that was it. No further contact whatsoever. It’s shabby treatment at best, but of a fifteen year old, well they should be ashamed that they couldn’t make a thirty second phone call to put the kid out of his misery.

The good was another publicly funded body. I applied on a long shot and my application was acknowledged. They said that they’d not contact applicants who didn’t get an interview but in this case, they did; a two line e-mail, for which I was eternally grateful. Thanks but no thanks is so much better than silence.

I’m still plugging away, I have a few applications in (on modified resumes – white space, bullet points!) so we’ll see what happens. I don’t hold out any hope but heck, something has to stick at some point, doesn’t it?