October 2004
In Celebration of Older Workers and Their Networks
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
October 2004
In Celebration of Older Workers and Their Networks
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
Trivia questions for this month:
1) What is the federal definition of an "older worker"?
2) Are you an older worker?
3) If you are, did you take off from work to celebrate Older Workers Week in September?
If your answer to any or all of these questions was "huh?!," you aren’t alone. Most audiences, when asked the first question, usually put the age as anywhere from 55 to 95. However, if you want to file an age discrimination suit, you only have to hit 40 to be classified as a "protected older worker."
Older Workers Week was instituted several years ago by the Department of Labor, but clearly the marketing campaign ain’t working very effectively yet. And you should have celebrated this week because, according to AARP, older workers are now in great demand. Their experience is once more considered valuable, and it’s about time, because the U.S. workforce is indeed aging quickly. By 2012, workers 55 and older will make up close to 20% of the workforce, compared with 14% in 2002, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This represents an increase of 10 million workers and thus the fastest growing segment of the workforce.
One of the chief strengths of the older worker is the network that s/he has developed over time. This informal rolodex can be valuable to companies trying to reach new markets, and to locate experts in niche fields to help them solve tricky and complex problems. However, most of us "older workers", while having these rolodexes in our heads (or in Outlook), have often let them lapse while we cling to our current jobs and positions. We make excuses as to why we can’t attend professional association meetings, volunteer to give a talk, or write an article or book about our area of expertise. Thus, when we’re laid off or are tired of the work-slave world and want to start a new business, we find ourselves quite isolated from those who can help us take the next step.
I have harped on the value of networks in my columns for nearly four years now. Just as I’m thinking that I’m the only person who thinks that they’re valuable, up come several articles and even a Nobel Prize winner to confirm my findings and hunches! So here’s the latest from other experts on the importance, especially if you’re an older worker, to keep your networks alive and lively.
1: Older workers are flocking to online networking.
Last spring I devoted an issue to online networking, which was still in its infancy. However, according to recent accounts, more and more savvy networkers, particularly older workers who have let their networks collect cobwebs, are turning to these specialty websites to improve their networking skills. There are a wide variety of websites. The best known ones are Tribe.net , Ryze Business Networking, and ZeroDegrees. As the September 13th Wall Street Journal article on online networking pointed out, these sites are the newest ways for recruiters, freelancers, and employers to locate job hunters and those experienced workers who are employed but not happy. And what’s great about these sites is that most of them are connected to the big job boards such as Direct Employers and Career Builder that often value the experience and talents that older workers are armed with. Conversely, Monster supports its own online network.
It should be pointed out that these networking sites, however, aren’t a panacea for all participants. The sites themselves and those who have used them point out that it may take months for these contacts to bring forth terrific career opportunities. But the same is true of good old offline networking. Expanding your networking through the Internet can give you access to potentially new and strong allies beyond your local geographic area.
2: Mature professional women network more effectively than their male counterparts.
Once upon a time, women who hit the highest levels of an organization were loath to network. The predominant attitude of this niche of older worker was: "I’ve made it on my own. Why should anybody else need help?" Formal networks like GE’s Women’s Network provide support and encouragement to women who find themselves overlooked for promotion or lacking the confidence to push themselves forward. This Network focuses on three crucial aspects of professional development contained in the GE tag, called PIE: performance, image, and exposure. Performance is what most career women focus on, thinking that their bosses will automatically notice their hard work and results. But image and exposure are often underestimated by women, while men tend to concentrate on these two aspects. Through networking and mentoring, mature women are learning to be more forward about their accomplishments and to make more efforts to get their work noticed. The members of this Network focus on helping one another focus on exuding confidence and forging a "can-do" image.
3: Savvy older workers are learning from their youngers. Why young professionals are setting up networking groups.
They’ve learned from older workers’ mistakes that indeed their career advancement and new opportunities depend greatly on contacts with others. So they start networking groups of all kinds. You may think that these are meat markets, not meet markets, but in fact, most of them are serious endeavors to help one another professionally, not personally. Take the "Friday Lunch Club," a venture that started last year with twelve young professionals who gathered for lunch in Indianapolis. Now they have 256 members who engage one another about networking to better jobs and opportunities, and to have a little fun.
If you’re looking for networking opportunities, check with local churches that have often formed networking groups during times of economic difficulty. Other good sources include the One-Stop Centers operated by local Workforce Investment Boards around the country. They often sponsor networking groups and arrange for guest speakers to help laid-off workers gather at a central place to help one another find jobs. For a list of One-Stops, go to www.servicelocator.org or ask Google for the One-Stop Centers in your area.
4: Savvy older workers Google potential networking partners as well as themselves.
It’s a good idea to check out how Google presents you online, especially if you’re armed with experience, skills, and have been actively involved in your community. It’s amazing how much info is out there for potential employers to find quickly: your marital status, hang-outs, photos, involvement in professional associations, volunteer work, pets, pet peeves, and even pet names (yikes!). Unfortunately, there is no way to un-Google unflattering things in the public domain.
On the positive side, the same Google tools that work for employers can work for older workers, too. Google gives us all a chance to check out our potential online networking companions quickly, to determine if we want keep the relationship going or not. And Googling yourself can also provide valuable ammo when you go for an interview and the interviewer asks you to verify or deny something that Google has printed.
5: What Ken Arrow, Nobel laureate, has to say about the impact of networking on one’s earnings.
Professor Kenneth Arrow, 1972 Nobel Prize winner in economics and professor emeritus at Stanford University, recently reported that a worker’s net worth can have a lot to do with that worker’s network. He developed a model that showed the following results: A person with one corporate connection would be expected to learn close to $20,000, while someone with links to five companies would be expected to earn over $30,000. He concludes that "the difference in the number of ties can induce substantial inequality and can explain 15-20% of the unexplained variation in wages."
This wage differential is more substantial for minorities. According to Arrow’s example, the average African-American worker had links to 3.2 companies and the average white worker had links to 5.7. This could go a long way toward explaining the large wage gap between African-Americans and whites. According to the latest stats, the average income of 45-54 year old whites for whom high school is the terminal degree stands at $27,407. For blacks with the same level of education and in the same age grouping, the average income is $22,337, according to 2002 statistics. See http://ferret.bls.census.gov/macro/032002/perinc/new03_043.htmew03_043.htm for a more thorough breakdown by age and education for each racial group.
Although Professor Arrow hasn’t included any policy recommendations as a result of his networking research, it’s certainly easy to see that all of us — young and older — need to sharpen our networking skills. Whether it’s a teacher or guidance counselor or parent pointing out the importance of networking in addition to sharpening job skills and further education, all of us need to realize the importance of old fashioned face time continually during the course of our careers. If you want to read the working paper that Arrow and his colleague, Ron Borzekowski have developed, go to http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2004/200441/200441pap.pdf
Hope that these 5 networking pointers help you as an older worker to cultivate and keep your network working well for you at all times.
Please keep your résumés and comments flowing during October. I love getting your comments and email. It always energizes me and gives me lots of ideas for upcoming issues. Happy Fall to one and all!
Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D.
jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com
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