How to Get a Job in Your Sixties Plus

Emphasize your maturity, life skills, humility, experiences, or anything else you have to offer, that younger workers cannot.

Apply for jobs where maturity is valued. Jobs as trainers, social assistance positions, jobs in libraries or other places where knowledge, information, and life experience works in your favour. Teacher aide jobs pay nearly as well as registered beginning teachers, but do not require the qualifications, effort, or hours required of qualified teachers.

Include anything in your resume that might give you an advantage over the 30-something whippersnappers! Have you worked with people of different cultures, learned some relevant computer software, or won an athletics competition recently? Have you published an article that's available on line? Dig, dig, and dig some more.

Look for ways to leverage your past experience into new jobs. For example, if you are you a former computer programmer with obsolete coding skills, document the analysis (or the documentation chores) that you did in prior years, and apply for Business Analyst (or, Technical Writer) positions.

Show what you have done. A range of skills shows flexibility. Have you learned a language, made a film and posted it on YouTube, or take a rafting trip?

Network. Join a church. Talk to people at the library. Go to the gym and make friends (as well as stay fit). Stay in touch with old friends and old workmates. Volunteer. Take classes (especially in your field). Let everyone you meet know that you're between jobs!

Go to every interview you are offered, even if the commute is impossible, the job isn't what you really want, or the pay is too low. The experience of the interview itself, may well help you later during an interview for a job you really do want. And, you never know what might eventuate at the interview.

Work on making a good first impression. You may not get that job in the first five seconds, but, you surely can lose it! Clothes in a current style. Hair cut, and dyed if needed (but, carefully, and, no comb-overs or 50's page-boys!) A firm handshake. Look them in the eye and SMILE.

Don't drop tips that emphasize your age. Don't brag about your grandchildren, or mention how many years it's been since you graduated from high school. Emphasize what you've been doing the last 10 or 20 years, no need to go any further back. Omit the year you graduated (unless you have a recent degree).

Don't give up! It only takes one "yes" for you to have a job.