I’m 60 years old and have had two job interviews in the last couple of months where they called me. They didn’t want to pay what I was asking, so I stayed working where I’m at.
I have skills that are in need. Actually I’ve changed careers a few times over the years as I could see the writing on the wall as far as where my career track was going. For example I was an aircraft mechanic for over 24 years, but then went into computers when I turned 42 YO. It was a good choice.
I’ve had at least one job since I was 14 years old. I did take a 2 week vacation before joining the military when I was 18 YO. Since then fully, or more, employed.
A few years ago (around 40 YO) I had a full-time job and 3, count them 3, part-time jobs. I kept one of the part-time jobs (teaching night classes at a local college) for 16 years and now get a nice little $200 a month retirement check.
Here’s the trick and it’s one that I told my kids when they were in college. Study something that isn’t “fun” but there’s a job market for it. I’m a database administrator - boring! My son is a CPA; one daughter is a mechanical engineer; and the other daughter is a high school science teacher. All are successful and have no trouble finding work. Oh! My wife is a nurse and has to do things like start catheters and wipe butts. But she makes almost $40 an hour plus time and a half overtime. Most local newspapers have multiple listings for nurses. If you want a job, become a nurse. Simple.
28 is a bit old. I mean by now, if you haven’t started a billion dollar app in your dorm room or made Vice President of Search Engines at Google, you should be a second year associate at Accenture or Goldman Sachs trying to eek out a living in New York or San Fran on $130k.
Dude, really? I spent my life “exploring” in college for 6 years. During that time, waited tables, sold tailored clothing, etc. I moved to CA in '99, recession from '09 to '11 had me doing freelance and unemployment checks with 11 years experience.
I was later hired by a company in 2011, with 401K, benefits, 4 weeks paid vacation. I recently moved to a better job, near the last location, better money, better benefits. And the difference between me and anyone who’s 28 is my 13.5 years experience, which is usually a good thing. But that’s for me. In many businesses, say being a gigolo, 28 might be pushing it. For a plethora of other jobs, you’re right in the mix. Welcome, good luck and enjoy the (hopefully employed) ride.
I waited an extra couple of years before going back for my MBA, and now I’m graduating as a 30 year old. I don’t have anything I can do to match up with those 28 year old go-getters. I am such a slacker.
From reading through some of the OP’s posts, I think his problem might not be age related.
To play devils advocate, I can sort of understand what the OP is talking about, depending on his industry. I was kind of joking before, but in a number of professional industries - investment banking, law, consulting, Big-4 accounting, PR, technology to name a few - people tend to star their careers at a very early age. Heck, most professions tend to have entry level jobs would naturally tend to skew younger. They tend to hire a lot of kids right out of college and work them 80 hours a week. Some also tend to attract super-ambitious kids who know that’s what they want to get into at an early age. So what might also seem weird is you could have a 28 year old vice president who has been working at one of those firms since he was 22 (or longer if he had internships in college).
At 42, I’m not looking for those jobs. I’m looking for the jobs managing those kids (or managing their managers). But the point is, 28 is not “too old” for the job market. But it may be on the older side of the pool of candidates looking to land the sort of entry level jobs that candidates right out of college look for.
I’ve worked since I was 16, but got my first professional job at 32. The job search was fine, and I had a lot of options despite entering a pretty tough-to-enter field with a fairly odd early work history and a completely irrelevant undergrad degree.
That said, I did a lot in between to prepare- grad school at a top school in my field, substantial volunteering, building a strong professional network, and researching every last in and out of the field. By the time I started my job search, I knew the professional landscape like the back of my hand and had friends everywhere.
What is it that you are looking for? IMHO, building a really good career is possible for most anyone, but it’s a long game and takes a great deal of focus and strategy.
And those monuments don’t clean themselves. You should apply. You’ll have to start at the bottom, but if you work hard enough you’ll eventually make it to the top.
I beg to differ. At 28, many people are getting their first real job. I had temp jobs from the time I finished college til I was about 27, and then I switched careers to my current one when I was 32. Since then I have had 3 jobs (I am 45 now). Too old? Most people prime earning years are their 30s and 40s.
I left the military at age 43 and was hired immediately by a company. I left them two years later and was hired immediately at age 45. Six years later I resigned and was hired immediately at age 51. At age 56, having risen to the top of that place, I was head-hunted by a company, took an offer and moved on. At age 58 I was hired by another company, where I worked for two years until being laid off. I didn’t have time to collect unemployment, because I was immediately hired by my last employer at age 61. I retired at age 62.
It kind of depends on what you got your degree in, or if you got your degree. In my circle, the people who had semi-professional degrees (architecture, computer science, engineering, construction management, accounting MS, etc…) tended to have career-path jobs right out of college in their fields, and stuck with them either indefinitely, or until they decided they wanted a major change and switched
careers or went back for schooling in something else, which was usually around their late 20s. But they weren’t “temp” jobs by any stretch of the imagination.
The ones who had more generic, or less valuable degrees (most liberal arts, most business except for focused professional accounting programs, etc…) tended to do something more or less what you describe- they came out of school, worked a series of jobs for the first 5-6 years, and then fell into/settled for something that they could do as a career right around 30 years old - I know several people who sort of fell into the less technical aspects of IT through this route, and I know a few people who fell into being things like law firm office managers and legal secretaries for high-status lawyers through this route. A lot of retail managers of my acquaintance followed this path as well, as have a lot of general white-collar workers at most companies.
So 30 years and 6-8 years of work does seem to be the watershed moment for a lot of people.
Not only that I finished my B.Sc. at age 45. I’ve taken the roundabout way on a lot of things. I left the military on a Friday and was working my present job Monday morning. I’ve turned down a couple of positions that would pay me more but give me less time at home.
For clarification Captain, are you talking a first job at 28 or getting a job with previous experience?
This is the post that tipped it over, for me. Or maybe being an employed person in my forties has blinded me to the plight of 28 year olds in the job market.
I finished a dual MA degree when I was 42 just before leaving the military. I was an enlisted aircraft mechanic from Kentucky and had more college than some of the officers that I worked for.
My last duty day in the military was also a Friday and started working a new job on Monday. I had 2 months of terminal leave saved up so I was getting 2 paychecks! Plus the new job paid hourly. If I worked 60 hours, I got paid for them. What a concept! The only downsides were going down to 2 weeks of vacation instead of the military’s 30 days and having to figure out what to wear to work.
It’s always funny to me when my fellow late-20s engineers say things like this – that we’re already past our prime in the job market. I don’t have this problem at all, but I’ve also read more textbooks over the 7 years since I’ve graduated thank I read while I was in college.
In my field it doesn’t have anything to do with age; it has everything to do with skillset.
The days of yore when a person could get hired into a corporation when young and stay there until retirement are long, long gone. They did exist for a brief time in the 50s to 70s but they are gone now.
The days when you could expect to remain even within one industry or type of career are recently fading too. The more specialized your talents and training are, the more likely that you will become obsolete.
I have read that a young person should expect to change careers 5 times in their working life, not jobs, but actual careers. It may be bullshit, I don’t know, I was trying to get a cite but got lost in all the job hiring related cites and gave up.
Whatever training you have at 28 is not going to last you long enough to reach retirement. You have to keep learning and adapting to the job market.
You have no idea what you will be doing 10 years from now, let alone 20 or 30 years. It might not even be related to your current skill set.
I was lucky to spend most of my working life at a 30 year job in industry, then that particular industry kind of evaporated and I moved into something completely different. But my ability to adapt, learn, and basic skills with people allowed my success in the new job. That was at 53 year old. You do not really need to know much specific to excel, you just need to be able to quickly learn new things. This is not as common a talent as it should be.
Since CaptainAmerica_1987 mentioned “you should have been established career wise”, I assume he means finding your first professional job at 28 rather than re-entering the job market at 28 with an established career. If there is a standard traditional path to a professional career that involves going to college immediately after high school, graduating in 4 years, and finding a job soon after, then just starting the job part at 28 is definitely non-standard.
On the other hand, even if it’s desirable to do everything ‘right’ every step of the way and land your first career job at 22, that doesn’t mean it’s common. More importantly, even if some baby-faced 22 year old does seem like a refreshing alternative to a stodgy 28 year old, you don’t really have any choice but to compete as best you can.
Rather than being inherently more desirable, the bigger advantage of being a 22 year old just graduating from school is that a lot of companies recruit on campus for their entry level jobs. The jobs they post publicly are looking for experienced candidates. But that’s an advantage of just finishing up your education, not being young.
28 seems old to not have figured out it doesn’t make any difference what everyone else has done with their lives.
