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