By CAITLIN KELLY
IT’S a baby boomer’s nightmare. One
moment you’re 40-ish and moving up, the next you’re 50-plus and suddenly,
shockingly, moving out — jobless in a tough economy.
Too young to retire, too old to
start over. Or at least that’s the line.
Comfortable jobs with comfortable
salaries are scarce, after all. Almost overnight, skills honed over a lifetime
seem tired, passé. Twenty- and thirty-somethings will gladly do the work you
used to do, and probably for less money. Yes, businesses are hiring again, but
not nearly fast enough. Many people are so disheartened that they’ve simply
stopped looking for work.
For millions of Americans over 50,
this isn’t a bad dream — it’s grim reality. The recession and its aftermath
have hit older workers especially hard. People 55 to 64 — an age range when
many start to dream of kicking back — are having a particularly hard time
finding new jobs. For a vast majority of this cohort, being thrown out of work
means months of fruitless searching and soul-crushing rejection.
To which many experts say, “What
did you expect?”
Everyone, whatever age, needs a
Plan B. And maybe a Plan C and a Plan D. Who doesn’t know that loyalty
and hard work go only so far these days?
“Shame on you if you’re not
thinking every single year, ‘What’s my next step?’” says Pamela Mitchell, a
career coach and author. “It’s magical thinking to do this.”
Ms. Mitchell, who has reinvented
her own career a few times, says everyone should think about options,
alternative job paths and career goals, just in case. She recommends talking
over job possibilities with family members and, if possible, building a
financial cushion.
Constant networking is crucial,
too. The idea, she says, is to prepare in case a big change comes.
“If you’re thinking about it,
you’ll be doing all this piecemeal along the way,” she says.
All of which, of course, is easier
said than done. But some people who have gone through the emotional and
financial strains of late-career unemployment say that with skill,
determination and a bit of luck, the end of a job doesn’t have to be the end of
the world. Changing jobs or careers can be a good thing later in life, despite
the many risks. Many agree that a willingness to push beyond the comforts of
location, lifestyle and line of work is vital.
Though there is no single path,
there are success stories that offer hope.
After Bonjet
Sandigan left a job in computers, he chose to operate a franchise for
ShelfGenie, which makes custom shelves.
Like the story of Bonjet Sandigan,
now of Delray Beach, Fla. An information technology specialist, Mr. Sandigan
was laid off from Dun & Bradstreet in August 2011. But Mr. Sandigan, now
51, has since carved out a new career with ShelfGenie, a seller of custom home
shelving.
It was a big switch. Mr. Sandigan
grew up in the Philippines and has a computer science degree from Texas
A&M. For years, he worked in I.T. support, helping customers over the
phone. But he never managed to move up. When Dun & Bradstreet offered him a
severance package, he figured that he could finally afford to take a little
time to figure out his next move.
“I did some soul-searching about
what’s important to me,” he says. “As you grow, your priorities change.”
His father had been an entrepreneur
in the Philippines, and Mr. Sandigan was attracted to the idea of working for
himself. With the help of a consultant, he looked into buying a franchise in
the I.T. or health care industries. Then he considered a ShelfGenie franchise,
which appealed to him partly because it was a turnkey operation.
“The infrastructure is there, the
market is there, the policies and procedures are there,” he says. “You just
have to follow the procedures.”
“I had a whole lot of fears,” he
says. “But my background told me to do the numbers, do the math and research
the market.”
He eventually spent a low
six-figure sum to buy four ShelfGenie sales territories and, after living for
decades near Dallas, moved to Delray Beach for his new career and new life. He
says his experience in I.T., working with cross-cultural teams in India and
China, has been surprisingly useful in his new job, which requires a focus on
customer service.
“It was a very diverse culture, so
my experience there, trying to understand where people are coming from” proves
helpful in his current work, he says. He says his old career taught him to
listen closely — a valuable skill in his new work.
“Now that I have to be in front of
the client,” he says, “I can spend two hours with them before we even discuss
the product, and I can do a demonstration.”
Mr. Sandigan says he figured that
the switch would mean a drop in income, at least initially. The first six to
eight months would be hard. But, by his reckoning, his new career is on track
financially.
“I’m right where I’m supposed to
be,” he says.
The Adventurer
Clare Novak is more than on track
with her new career. At 58, she is making twice as much as she did in 2008,
when her previous work dried up.
But Ms. Novak didn’t just change
jobs. She changed countries and cultures. After 18 years working in Chester
Springs, Pa., doing management training for a range of businesses, she moved to
Islamabad, Pakistan, in November, to work as a human resources adviser to nine
power companies. Her first contract will last through this year, and possibly
through 2015, a prospect she is happy to contemplate.
How did she end up making such a
leap? She had formerly done work for someone in Egypt, who e-mailed her a job
description and asked if she knew anyone who might fit the bill.
“The only person I know who would
go there is me,” Ms. Novak says. When asked if she was interested, she said, “I
was thrilled and said yes.”
Today, her life is vastly
different. Once an avid hiker, she now spends more time at home, given that she
is a foreign woman in a patriarchal society. She lives in what amounts to a
rooming house and no longer enjoys the privacy she did in Chester Springs.
“Fortunately, I’m with a very
collegial group,” she says.
She is accustomed to adapting, and
to using her networking skills. In the economic downturn, “networking and word
of mouth were how I developed my business,” Ms. Novak said in an e-mail interview.
“Volunteering and networking kept me in business quite nicely, including
overseas work in Egypt and Ukraine, and later Canada and Kuwait.”
When American businesses began
automating the training that was her specialty, a shrinking profession shrank further.
Several of her large clients ended projects.
“My business was down to a few
small projects and one week’s work a month in Kuwait,” she says. “The year
after, I had only Kuwait, which was not enough to make ends meet.
“In those down years, it was a
struggle to remain positive and keep at it,” she says. “A long-time friend and
colleague suggested that we form a business forum of like-minded women to help
each other. We kept each other on track with our businesses and emotionally.”
To this day, she says, all of those
women “are still in business, and we are all experiencing upturns.”
Moving to Pakistan has meant big
changes. “There is considerably less autonomy for any foreigner of any age
here,” she says. “Due to security, both men and women can only walk in the
daylight, and never alone. Our driver can take us to specific sectors, and
outside of that we require a protection officer to accompany us. Society is
relatively segregated socially, so women cluster together and men likewise. The
businesswomen I meet are comfortable in mixed groups, and some are very
cosmopolitan.”
The Inventor
Jeffrey Nash,
invented the Juppy, a sling that helps children learn to walk.
After 15 years selling men’s
clothing for a national retailer, Jeffrey Nash, 58, was earning $90,000 a year
and was often the top salesman in his company. But as the recession deepened,
he began referring his customers to struggling co-workers. His sales
commissions took a hit.
“I kind of softened up,” he says.
“My sales went down because I was sharing them.”
His income fell to $65,000. And as
shoppers became more cautious during the recession, he knew that it would soon
fall even further.
“I was doomed,” he says. “I knew I
had to come up with an idea.”
Mr. Nash, who lives in Las Vegas,
had invented a device he called the Juppy, a sling that helps toddlers learn to
walk more safely and confidently.
“I had already touched base with a
patent attorney and had started the ball rolling,” he says. He took three weeks
of vacation to see if he could make a go of his invention, telling only a few
people about his plans. Their opinions were “really negative,” he recalls.
Undaunted, he drove to Los Angeles
and San Diego, selling the Juppy from his trunk and on a televised sales show,
and earning $12,000 in three weeks.
“I never went back to work,” he
says.
Investing $35,000 of his savings
and an additional $9,000 from his father and a friend, Mr. Nash had the device
manufactured in China.
“The transition was simple,” he
says. “If I’d stayed in my old job, I was going to lose in the end. I was done.
I needed a massive change. I needed income of several hundred thousand dollars.
I knew I had to take a risk, a massive risk.”
That included selling his home —
for $200,000 less than he had paid for it, because of the downturn — and
renting a house instead.
“I used to drive a Lexus,” he says.
“I let that go. I don’t need it anymore.”
Mr. Nash has since sold $500,000
worth of his product, netting $200,000 in two and a half years, an annual
average of $80,000.
He is relieved, and proud of having
successfully leapt from the familiar into the unknown.
“It’s unbelievable to me that at my
age I recognized a need and filled it,” he says. “We’re having a hard time
filling orders right now, we have so much demand.”
The Renovator
Duke Marquiss had
a lot of experience in real estate, but the recession meant a lack of new
developments for him to work with. Today, he buys houses and renovates them for
sale.
When the economy heads south, it
helps to have been through the situation a few times before, says Duke
Marquiss, 67, a real estate investor and broker in Fort Collins, Colo. In 1974,
he bought a motel in Gillette, Wyo., during an oil and coal boom. “I made the
most money of my life,” he recalls.
But the boom went bust, and in
1987, he moved to Scottsdale, Ariz., where he worked as a mortgage broker. By
the time he and his wife moved to Colorado in 1989, Mr. Marquiss understood how
to buy, sell, manage and rehabilitate real estate.
Today he earns his living in the
real estate market niche known as A.R.V., for “after repair value.” He buys
properties, restores them and sells them for a profit. Tipped off by a local
friend, he bought 65 town houses in Rock Springs, Wyo., in 2005 for $75,000
apiece, on average, and sold them each for about $100,000.
Mr. Marquiss had saved carefully
and lived for three years with no income during the worst years of the
recession. Because of a lack of new construction, he says he couldn’t “do the
development side I liked and was good at.”
“That left me back selling houses,”
he adds, “so I decided I would fix and flip.”
Mr. Marquiss uses only private
investors to do his deals, borrowing between $15,000 and $450,000. “They’re
tired of low interest rates or losing their money in the stock market,” he
says.
His new line of work is not for
everyone, he warns.
“You’ve got to be flexible and
think very quickly,” he says. “You can’t bank on any of these deals ever
closing.”
Before he found his new field, his
wife suggested at one point that he find a full-time job working for someone
else. He sent out 200 résumés, but received only one call. Sharply reducing
their costs of living helped Mr. Marquiss and his wife, Ginger, weather the
transition to their new life. They sold their 3,000-square-foot mountain home
and now live in a condominium a third of the size in Fort Collins. He also
saves $600 to $700 a month on gasoline by not commuting 45 minutes each way
into town.
“It takes a conscious decision to
reduce your overhead,” he says. “I see so many people in denial about where
they really are financially.”
The Networker
Kenneth Jay Cohen,
with his son, Jonathan, has been laid off several times, which has taught him
the power of networking.
Since graduating from college,
Kenneth Jay Cohen, 52, of Stamford, Conn., has faced six layoffs, the first in
his early 30s, and the most recent at 50 with two young children to support. A
prolonged period of unemployment wasn’t an option, so he did what he has done
diligently for decades: he called upon his multiple networks for guidance and
leads.
The first time he lost his job, “it
was a shock, because I’d never experienced this before,” he says. “But now I
know exactly what to do. I try to feed the network as much as I can while I’m
still working so I know it’s there when I need it.”
He has more than 1,000 contacts on
LinkedIn and works at finding and keeping business contacts elsewhere, too.
“Every three or four months I go to a meeting,” he says. “I know who in my
network is out of work, so every time I pick up a lead I pass it along to the
group.”
Staying actively connected has also
helped.
“I’m associated with a few finance
groups within my own industry because people in finance need I.T.,” he says. “I
also network with bankers, investment bankers and management types and a few
accounting groups.”
In all, Mr. Cohen belongs to 24
groups, of which he is most active in seven to nine at any given time.
When he has lost a job, he has made
a point of expanding his networks even further. “I always pick a new group to
which I devote my time and my leadership skills,” he says. “It keeps me sane.
It keeps me focused.”
It took him five months to find his
latest job, a full-time position handling I.T. security for a Manhattan-based
financial services company. He found his previous job within 30 days, picking
up a year’s guaranteed contract work in Hartford.
“I seem to be able to find work,”
he says modestly. “I know project managers who’ve been out of work for two
years, and they’re really frustrated.” Some, he says, are too busy nursing
their wounds to get out and meet the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others in
their field and affiliated areas who might be able to help them.
Living in an affluent area can
complicate the issue when it’s time to tighten your belt.
“I’m back to where I was three and
a half years ago financially,” he says. “The consumer I used to be when I was
younger has considerably changed. It boils down to what your priorities are,
and mine is my family. Sure, I’d like a shiny new Lexus and a million-dollar
home. But is that practical for me? I’d rather have my kids.”
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