It can be tough looking for work when your over a certain age, even though you may have a wealth of experience and knowledge behind you companies are sometimes unwilling to give the older worker a chance. The main reasons seem to be based mostly in the cost savings hiring younger employee’s can bring along with the common misconception that a more senior employee would be less likely to get to grips with new technologies.

So how do you go about getting a job when it seems like the cards are stacked against you? Well, you have to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Make a list of all your qualifications, skills and experience and then go through job listings to identify which jobs you would be best suited for.

When you’ve identified these jobs you need to do a little research about them, what qualifications do they require?, what sort of skill sets are needed? which companies in your area are looking for people to fill these vacancies? Then compare your earlier skills list against the research you have to see if your skills and experience match up to employers expectations. The important point about this comparison is to identify your weaknesses that a potential employee might perceive and then work out how to resolve these. This might simply require doing a short evening or on-line course or you may need to do some voluntary or free consulting to get more experience in a specific field.

Once you’ve made sure that your weaknesses are as minimal as possible its time to start networking, if you have any friends colleagues or acquaintances in the job area your looking to work in now is the time to contact them, if you don’t know anyone linked with the job in mind then you need to look into how to make some contacts in the profession, what do these people do? Where do they go? Are there any forums or networking sites which they might use?

And finally and most importantly, don’t give up hope, you may well have many knock backs along the way to getting that ideal job but don’t take it too personally, every job seeker (no matter the age) has to go through lots of interviews before getting a job, so keep on going, you will eventually get what you want as long as you keep on trying.

Make your resume work for you.

Your resume has to sell for you, you only have 20 to 30 seconds to convince the reader to keep on reading, here are a couple of tips to help you prepare that “Killer copy”

But be careful not to over sell yourself………..

1. Make sure the visual layout has scan appeal, the reader has to be able to find the information he or she wants quickly and easily.

2. Keep it short, a maximum of 2 pages.

3. Organise the content, make sure it flows.

4. Keep the paragraphs and sentences short and sweet.

5. Make sure the information is relevant and relates to the position you are applying for.

6. Shout about your achievements (but not too loud) make sure that you relate the benefits of your achievements as to why a prospective employer would want to give you a job.

7. Check Check and Check again for misspellings, typo errors and grammatical gaffs

• Check that you know where the interview is and how your going to get there. If you dont know the area then it would be worthwhile doing a dummy run there and back at the time that you expect to leave for the interview, this will give you a good idea of the kind of traffic you can expect to see.
• Make sure you memorize the names of the contacts you have at the company.
• Research the company, find out as much as you can about them, What do they do? What are they planning to do? Who are their competition? What field are they in? What are the current big issues in that field / industry? The news section of their website is a good place to start with this, if they dont have one then try googling their name for any information you can find.
• Research the job you are applying for, try and see how this role fits with what you’ve learned about the company so far.
• Google the contact names you have at the company for any blogs or forum threads that you might find, this could give you valuable insite into your interviewer or the general atmostphere of the workplace.

Employers are busy people so your CV should only contain relevant information in a format which is easy for them to find what they need quickly and easily. The best way to achieve this is to stick with the traditional format of contact details, work history, qualifications and additional skills.

Contact Details

Just the basics here, name, address, phone, mobile and email is all that’s necessary.

Work History

This should list your work history in reverse chronological order giving more detail to the most recent jobs and only provide information for older work where there is relevant or note worthy achievements attained.

Qualifications

All you need here is a bullet point list detailing what qualifications you have and when you achieved them.

Additional Skills and Experience

This is an optional category where you would list any skills or experience which you have gained outside your job which is relevant to the job your are now applying.

A functional CV is a little different from the traditional format but can be useful in certain situations. This CV styles main focus is your skills, experience and achievements that you have gained over your entire career without giving so much emphasis on where you attained them. This style of CV is especially useful if you are changing careers paths, the down side to this is that this CV style is not very common so some employers may prefer a more traditional style.

Do

• When listing your work history identify any relevant skills, achievements or experienced gained. If you can not think of anything relevant then that’s a good clue that its best to just list the job title, start and finish date, as the employer probably wont be interested in it.
• Spend some time on the look and design of your CV, first impressions count and a CV which is visually appealing can make the difference between getting that interview and getting a “better luck next time” email
• Make sure that your CV is easy to navigate, an employer will typically check for certain experience, skills or qualifications before Continue reading CV Tip - CV Dos and Don’ts…

As we’ve mentioned before, when advertising a job employers are usually inundated with CV’s and so the amount of time they have to spare on each one is limited. This means that you only have a very small window in which to make a good impression, so make sure that your CV is presented in a clean, easy to follow fashion.

It doesn’t have to be a work of art, but it does have to be easy to follow, read well and have distinct sections so that your potential employer can quickly find what they want.

Every time an employer advertises a vacancy you can guarantee they will get hundreds if not thousands of replies Continue reading CV Tip - Keep your CV short and to the point…