Got laid off from my job about 7 weeks ago. Spent the last almost 16 years
qa testing webpages and now at 61 years old have to start over. I was hoping
to spend the next 5 years or so just doing my job and not having to struggle
to learn anything new but things have changed.
Has anybody here had to restart their career this late in the game? Any tips or
advice would be much appreciated, thank you.
Sorry to hear that. Is unplanned retirement viable? How about getting some minimum wage job to at least slow the bleed from your savings?
Thinking at least some of your skills are applicable in the job market.
Good luck,
Brian
President-elect Biden has talked about lowering the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60. I’m a little excited about that, as I can see myself (62) retiring and taking care of the house while my gf continues working.
I got laid off at about that age and was able to land another good-paying job almost right away. Unfortunately, it was a really stressful job and I ended up retiring about a year later.
My dad got laid off at 57. After sending out innumerable resumes, he got a job in the public sector instead and continued working in the same field for another fourteen years.
QA testing web pages isn’t a dead career, and something that can be done remotely. You have some hope of restarting your career with only a brief interruption, so get those resumes posted and we’ll all keep our fingers crossed for you.
Otherwise, sorry this happened to you, it’s a sucky situation in a sucky year.
A lot of the IT folks in State and local government seem to be like you. If you can do basic troubleshooting on computers and technology the local community college probably wants to hire you.
Actually most any type of college, as well as public school systems. My IT specialist son worked 18 years with school. With the explosion in remote learning because of the pandemic, might you be able to adapt your skills and experience in support of that?
Wishing the best for you. Happened to me also. My state job service had a specialized program for older workers searching for employment.
Find some large clubs or volunteer organizations in your area, and look at their web pages. If they suck - which is likely - see if you can volunteer as web master. I got drafted into that job for a local club and found that the members were scared to death of writing web pages, and will be happy for you to take over. If the club is big enough, and has managers as members then you have a nice network, and you’ve already proven yourself, so hiring you would be low risk for them.
Look for general software QA jobs. With QA procedures and methodology are more important than knowing the particular software.
I finished out my working life by teaching at a technical college…
No degree, no educational experience needed. A decade in the field was what was needed. I was teaching “kids” (okay, 18-52 year olds) how to do what I’d been doing… and entertaining them with crazy stories of my old clients and co-workers.
Was a lot of fun, and a lot less stress than my “real” job had been… and came with a state pension!
Similar to digs (but I have a graduate degree) I went from a corporate IT software engineer job, got laid off, and landed at a community/technical college teaching programming. It’s a blast, showing students how we do things in the real world versus what the book says. Plus a state pension…
I returned to the US four years ago and had to look for a job in my late 50s. I found one in the local office of a national insurance company. Not completely satisfied with that, I looked some more after a couple of years and found my current job in a hospital while in my early 60s. Much better job, much better pay. I can see staying with it for a few years until I finally retire.
One thing that helped was this is Hawaii, where workers were in short supply. It’s not that uncommon for people in there 60s to be successful job-hunters here. Unfortunately, the pandemic has hit businesses here hard, and I don’t think I would have such an easy time of it now. Now there are tons of younger applicants who have been laid off. This is no longer the job-seeker’s paradise it once was.
But one thing is as soon as my plane landed in Honolulu, job-hunting became my full-time job. Just plodded through applications all day ever day. I bagged both my insurance-company and hospital jobs in less than two months of looking, but you have to keep at it.
I also signed up with employment agencies. While I did not end up getting a job through them, they were helpful and supportive, and I think it was a toss-up as to whether I would find employment on my own (which I did) or through them.
Happened to me. I went to a comparable job, part-time, working two weekend relief shifts, and they were glad to have me, experienced and mature. Gave me a chance to gear down to retirement income, organize my leisure lifestyle. Moved to and commuted from a farm town two hours away, significantly reducintg my cost of living. All plusses. I was happy as hell, my coworkers envied me.
This. I see a lot of SW testing openings in the tech sector. Companies are hiring.
I’m interested in what field you worked.
It was a marketing company. We had a department that built and maintained
webpages for our clients.
XL, your skills are needed at many companies. Are you on LinkedIn and have you built up your network? Over the last 20 years that I’ve been there I’ve scoured my brain to remember the many people I’ve worked with, and if you haven’t done that and connected with former coworkers then I highly recommend it. Make your connections people that you actually worked with, and not friends/family (although of course you can include them). And then, set the switch to let recruiters know you are looking for work.
Also sign up with the many job boards available,
www.indeed.com – my recruiting friends say this is the best site of them all
www.careerbliss.com
www.trendingjobs.com
www.matchedjobs.com
www.ziprecruiter.com
www.lensa.com
us.experteer.com – for executive positions
www.johnsonjobs.com
www.glassdoor.com
And I’m pretty sure there are others too.
You and I are the same age and so you’ve done many things in your career. Mine is a mix of military, SQ test engineering, and regulatory and quality systems (for medical devices) – some may see that mix as changing horses in the middle of a stream but I’ve positioned it to be a strength. I am starting a job search and have found that many companies are hiring, even now in the middle of the holidays.
Many interviews these days are done on Zoom or MS Teams or Google Meet / similar. One hiring manager told me they’re surprised how many people do not turn on their video camera while in an interview. I can understand the camera shyness, and I don’t like it myself, but in a job interview I feel that I must show myself.
Good luck!
Oh and one more thing. You’ll get a lot of emails if you sign up on the several job boards. Consider creating a separate email account for that. I actually use three email addresses, one for personal, one for junk, and one for professional that’s on my LinkedIn profile that has my real name and is professionally presentable.
Again, good luck!
I have been thinking that it would be a good boost for the economy if they would pass some legislation making early retirement more financially advantageous- maybe dropping the minimum age an calculating a higher Social Security payout for people choosing early retirement. Or, in cases like the OP’s - cases where people over 60 have been laid off due to the pandemic.
It would free up economic opportunities for younger people and it would also assist in the societal goal of allowing older people at high risk for serious illness to stay home.
I considered started a thread on this subject earlier this year, something to the effect of “Recommend and Defend a Coronavirus Relief Measure that Would Benefit You Personally — I’m 63.5 and just started drawing my monthly SS benefit back in October.
I considered holding out and living off savings for another year - but I decided to go ahead and take the benefits now. This decision was partly motivated by the fact that I own a valuable property that I intend to sell in 10 years or so, so my retirement funds will get a large boost at some point and my SS check will become less important.