Back in the Day

Previous roles are changed as life cycles evolve.

Today is Gerry Crispin’s birthday. He’s over 55 which is one of the thresholds for deeming a person as old, or ready to retire, or antiquated, or no longer useful. In other words, a target for age discrimination, whether passive or overt. Yet those who are 40 and older, even as old as in their late 80s, are still active in the work marketplace via many forms of employment and engagement. There is still a need for their knowledge, skills, and talent. Those attributes, those assets, provide a great deal of value to whatever enterprise chooses to include them in their mixture of talent.

I used this day to post a (as usual) teasing birthday wish to Gerry that read: “Have people started asking you about what you did back in the day? I just know you have a great response for that.”

For those of you who are curious about how “back in the day” is defined, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English says it means “a long time ago, when you were much younger.”

Actually (never short on words or responses), Gerry did have a great public response, while also laughing at himself. It was:

lol. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth, recruiting was different but, as a candidate, you could physically apply to more companies then on a given day (Saturday before noon) with envelopes, paper resumes and stamps than you can in an entire week online. We could do a test…if there were any newspaper classifieds left but there isn’t so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

He raises some good discussion points. Undaunted, I had a response to his observations.

In the days of classified ads, all people were paid a minimum, livable wage. Thus, they were able to afford the cost of paper, copies, envelopes, stamps, transportation costs. But then, mailboxes were on every other street corner or the postal worker picked up the outgoing letters while delivering the new.

In those days, also, there wasn’t as much research required (or at least invested in) finding a job.

Now, in this digital age, there is less volume in terms of sent resumes because there’s more need for research. The challenges of making online applications can be time consuming if the employer doesn’t have a good webmaster.

Additionally, people are so busy working two, and up to five, jobs (as well as gigs) that they simply don’t have the time to do as many applications as back in the ’60s.

Then there are the discouragement and disillusion factors.

Gen Xers and Millennials (and even some who are older) have no qualms about expressing their belief that gray hair is an indication of being old, retired, and no longer active in the workforce. They will politely inquire about what it was like “back in the day” while forgetting that there are many who have gray hair and hold very responsible positions in businesses, while sitting on boards of directors, practicing from the bench (Associate Justice Kennedy), and being very involved in their consulting and training professions.

These gray- and white-haired stoics are not out in the pasture. An elite number have managed to stay afloat in the relevant and needed arena and are proving their worth in gold. And there are those who have been worn down to the rim and taken out of the game, many times not by choice.

Applying for work “back in the day” was more reasonable in many ways. No longer is it possible to simply take the “Help Wanted” sign out of the window and hand it to the owner while saying, “I’d like to apply for the job,” and get considered (even hired) on the spot. Job search was supposed to get better because of technological advances and the reach of cyber presence which also reduced the cost associated with conducting a search and vying for the gold ring along with that younger group.

There’s a vast amount of value in these vintage competitors. The training and preparation during their early days of school was different, more sound. There wasn’t a mass flocking to garner a degree, or even an advanced degree. There was substance being taught and concepts demonstrated in classroom discussion. There was actual experience gained through internships and volunteer work that didn’t detract from earning a meaningful living wage. Wage earning and work experience happened through various channels. For most, that experience and education was recognized and rewarded. But that was back in the day.

References:

• From guns to gay rights, Justice Anthony Kennedy was the Supreme Court’s swing vote, Richard Wolf, USA TODAY (3:32 p.m. ET June 27, 2018 | Updated 10:24 p.m. ET June 27, 2018)
• The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
• Age Discrimination
• EEOC Head On Age Discrimination By Employers, Chris Farrell Contributor, Next Avenue (Aug 17, 2018, 01:00pm)
• Facebook will remove 5,000 ad targeting categories to prevent discrimination, Nick Statt, The Verge (Aug 21, 2018, 1:23pm EDT)
• Try These 7 Smart Strategies to Find a Job, Randy Lilleston, AARP (March 23, 2018)
• Avoid the Seven Mistakes Job Seekers in Their 50s Make, How to sell yourself in a digital work world, sharpen your interview skills and write a look-at-me résumé, James A. Martin, AARP

Resources:

• Unfinished Work: The Struggle to Build an Aging American Workforce
• HR Genius

Stretching Standards

Today is Father’s Day. Today would also be my father’s 84th birthday. I like to remember him on this day with an article or blog post that contains nuggets of information to help guide us in our recruiting, management, and career endeavors. Today is no exception.

Born in 1926, Dad started life in the first third of the Great Depression on a farm in Louisiana. It was a different time then, governed by a world that was going through a metamorphosis. It was squeezing out of the Agrarian Age and making a more formal step into the Industrial Age. But farming was still the staple of the land and the thing that allowed us to survive.

Education, to be certain, was very important. But the crops were the means of not only paying the bills and maintaining the family but also the means of using our raw skills to maintain everything. Each person and farm was an industry to itself.

Everyone on the land needed some knowledge and ability to use, maintain, and repair everything used around the land. Animal husbandry was an essential knowledge. Understanding the habits and idiosyncrasies of each animal provided clues on where the skills of that particular creature were going to fit best.

Since handling the chores on the farm took a front seat to everything else, completing one’s formal education was important but not as important as just surviving the times. By the time he and Mom married, Dad had a fifth grade education.

Although not much, that less than elementary school education it was good enough for the government to draft Dad for WWII. He was smart, clever, and ethical. Once he and Mom were established, they both went back to school to earn their high school diplomas and then even more studies in some areas of college work. Both of them progressed very well because they went the extra mile with regard to stretching their horizons with more education. They became more qualified for the work they did.

As I said, times were different then. It was not uncommon for the bank president to have only a high school education and 50 years later boast to members of the Chamber of Commerce Board that he (emphasis on the “he”) was a self-made man, meaning he learned and earned his position through experience on the job. Those were his only credentials. For a long time, that was a very honorable boast to be able to make. By the 1950s, having a high school diploma set the job applicant apart from others because they had formal school training and education.

Enter the 1960s. World War II and Korean War vets with their brides were starting to get established and were raising families. Although it was a stretch, they found ways to put aside small amounts of the weekly household budget in order to save for a college education for the children so that they would have a brighter future. A college education would mean they were more qualified than their competition for the better paying jobs that were now quite plentiful.

We weren’t watching and the Industrial Age evolved into the Electronic Age and then the Technology and Internet Age. As with the ever-changing nature of things, there comes a higher threshold in order to be considered average and adequate. Specializations meant there was a flood of people rushing to be part of the new age of specialists and gain the extra high paying positions for having the more specialized knowledge, skill, and training, in addition to the comprehension of how all of it fit together. Thus new levels of education and certification became requirements for the new entry-level positions. Advanced education became even more important.

Today we are again enduring an economic depression, one that I still prefer to call the New Millennium Depression. It’s been with us for nearly as long as its predecessor from a century ago. Given that this one is global in nature and that what we used to consider Third World Countries are now competing with us in terms of technology and refined information, the need for specialization is increased again. That means advanced degrees that prove we’ve obtained more refined knowledge about how to think, use strategy, and apply our skills is of even higher importance. The high school diploma is a mere stepping stone for showing we have discipline.

Will there come a time when nearly everyone will need to have a Ph.D. in order to qualify for the most menial of jobs? I doubt it. For one thing, the cost of such an endeavor is prohibitive. The necessity to gain experience in order to build on the training is mandatory. And we’ll essentially get back to the driving dynamics of the Great Depression — the need to cover costs and sustain our selves and our families will mean we’ll have to put off advanced education until things are better under control.

However, going to school these days is no longer the five mile walk in the driving snow from yesteryear. Now gaining an education as well as an advanced education has options. It can be done in the company of our peers of many chronological ages as well as backgrounds and home countries. On the other hand, we can bypass the traditional and gain our education through online schooling.

Either way we do it, we are stretching our standards for gaining education and the rewards of that extra effort — better pay for more responsibilities and a position closer to the helm.

Viva
Yvonne LaRose, CAC