[0:00:00] Deborah Hope: You. Catherine Graham from the Washington Post has a fabulous saying that I always have as a byline on my email, to love what you do and feel that it matters. How could anything be more fun? So I just really invite people to really look at this age and stage as a new chapter, maybe an encore career, maybe in an opportunity just to find something new in our life.

[0:00:32] Brett Johnson: We are Looking Forward Our Qay from Studio C in the 511 Studios. That's in the Brewery District just south of downtown Columbus, Ohio.

[0:00:40] Brett Johnson: This is Brett. Over the years, Carol and I have had many conversations regarding issues affecting job seekers, that being limits on job opportunities, preconceptions built into applicant tracking systems, and difficulty using social media as the basis for a job search. However, the greatest issue has been ageism in the hiring process. Today we have the opportunity to hear about a program to support the 50 plus job seeker throughout the state of Massachusetts. We hope the information on the program is going to help provide a new program model for here in central Ohio.

[0:01:11] Carol Ventresca: You know, Brett, today's guest has a whole different slant on how to reach and support the 50 plus job seeker population. So we are welcoming Deborah Hope, an executive career coach, certified master coach and the founder of leader and facilitator of the Massachusetts Library Collaborative 50 Plus Job Seekers Networking Group. I make it a lot of mistakes because it's such a long title. Deborah is successfully supporting 50 plus job seekers on the East Coast. So, Deborah, thank you so much for joining us from Boston.

[0:01:51] Deborah Hope: Thank you very much, Brett and Carol. I am honored and thrilled to be here and I'm so happy to make this connection through my daughter Rebecca, who's with the Chamber of Commerce of Columbus, Ohio.

[0:02:02] Carol Ventresca: Yes, we have to give a shout out to Becca. It was great.

[0:02:06] Brett Johnson: Well, before we explain to our listeners how your program began, could you first talk about you your career field in finance, including a little stint on Wall Street and an overview of your background, how you eventually moved into this career coaching arena?

[0:02:22] Deborah Hope: Great question, Brett, and I loved it because further on in the podcast, you're going to ask me some tips about how to tell your career story. Briefly, you opened up with a great question. I had an undergraduate degree in sociology. I've always been fascinated with why people do what they do or how they think, and I would have majored in psychology if we had that major at my college. So sociology was my undergraduate. I was a social worker for a little bit. When I got my MBA, I followed in the footsteps. I did some business work and I decided that an MBA would be more fun to do than another degree. So I did my MBA at Boston College and followed my parents, my mom in the investment industry and my older brother and my mother was a trailblazer in the Boston investment industry, meaning breaking glass ceilings. Right. First woman to be admitted to the Boston Securities Traders Association. And I'm bragging about that because that.

[0:03:35] Carol Ventresca: Was in the my gosh, that's wonderful. What a great role model you had in the start of your career. Not many people have that.

[0:03:44] Deborah Hope: Correct. And she just loved the business of the investment business. She was on the institutional side, as my brother was. So that's where I went, as opposed to retail. And at dinner table conversation was always about how the stock market did today and million share trades, that type of thing. So it was a lot of fun. So I was on Wall Street for 20 years, working always in the Boston office of a major broker, a major investment bank, including Barclays, Credit Lion, A, payne, Weber, Drexel Burnham. Lots of fun places. And then 911 happened, and my trading desk, I was managing a managing director of a trading desk, and I had an open mic to my New York office, and there was a lot of chaos in pain and screaming, and they were not at the World Trade Center, but across the street from the World Trade Center. So it was a really pivotal time. And I was on the 38th floor overlooking floor to ceiling windows, overlooking Logan Airport in Boston haba. So it was pretty frightening because Boston, if you recall, had Lane that was trashed crashing. So we were all pretty shaken by it all. And within two years, I left that business because I was thinking, I have two toddlers at home, my parents are elderly, and the fire truck cannot reach me on the 38th floor. So I decided to get a ground level job, and I stayed at home for a while, so I did that.

[0:05:25] Deborah Hope: And then in 2010, I started I immersed myself in coaching as I took a self assessment, a huge self assessment. What did I really love about my 20 year career? 25 year career in finance? I love the clients that I had. I love the relationships. I love fostering my employees to support them in moving forward. I just loved that part of the coaching, so to speak. And so I immersed myself in a wonderful International Coach Federation program, two year program, and started a practice in 2010. And then during the Pandemic, I did another two year program for a master's level coaching program. Out of the whole point institute.

[0:06:16] Carol Ventresca: When you did your assessment, was that through an organization, through a nonprofit, or did you go straight to the assessment company?

[0:06:25] Deborah Hope: Assessments can come in so many forms. That is one of the modules of the program that I run now in the Integral coaching program I did through New Ventures West, again, which is professionally certified through the International Coach Federation. There is a deep assessment there through the program. So it was more of a deep personal dive in doing my own inner work. We have this gremlin that's playing around in our heads a lot. Oh, you can't do that, or you shouldn't do that, or, Why are you doing that? So I was working with my gremlin and what I cannot do and versus what I really would love to do. So I did that kind of assessment, and I did some skills assessments more with friends who had it was more of colleagues who had some tools that they helped me use and that type of thing. So, no, I did not go directly to a company, but I do recommend some companies now that I've become certified in other programs.

[0:07:36] Carol Ventresca: Right, well, and the reason I'm asking it's really a brett Segue right into my first question. This is what people come to us and talk about. I want to make a change. I want to transition. I don't want to completely retire, but I don't know what to do. So the notion of really sitting back and however you do that assessment, if you do it personally, just yourself, thinking through it, or you take an actual mechanical test, you go through those steps of not just what I can do, but what do I want to do?

[0:08:12] Deborah Hope: Correct.

[0:08:12] Carol Ventresca: Great. Okay, so now my next question is let's talk about the 50 plus Job Seekers networking group. This group began, I think, in the 2020, just before the Pandemic. And let's discuss why you created the program, who your target audience is, methods that you've utilized to outreach to people. And how exactly did you create that format? Because it's an all online program.

[0:08:37] Deborah Hope: It started the program, the curriculum. That format was created in 2016 by a career coach, Susan Kelly. That's it right there. But by Susan Kelly, a career coach. She, in her 40 year career as a career coach, noticed that people over 50 could benefit from polishing and fine tuning and retuning their job search tools. So she originally reached out to the Massachusetts Council on Aging, the Executive Office of Elder Affairs, out of the governor's office, and they funded the program. And it was to be distributed through meaning presented through the local Councils on Aging, which in Massachusetts is in every town. And we had 17 locations just before the Pandemic. We grew from in 2015, when she started it, to 17 locations throughout the state. And every year, it was always a question of where do we get will the funding come through? Again from the state? How's the state doing, and will the funding come through? And we always had a gap from the fiscal year end of June 30 to September. We never knew if we were going to get funded and if we would be up and running. So several of us reached out to other venues for funding and other ways to create this program and other venues with funding.

[0:10:12] Deborah Hope: And that's when I reached out to the Tewkesbury library. Robert Hayes is the community outreach librarian and head of technical services, and Robert Hayes has been hugely on board with this as a co facilitator of every program we've done together since 2019. So we started first with an onsite there in 2019 at the Tewkesbury Library, and then from there we have reached out to more libraries. And today, 62 public libraries throughout Massachusetts, in southern New Hampshire, have supported this program. So they fund the program.

[0:10:53] Carol Ventresca: The program itself is not a 501 C three is it a licensed nonprofit. So it's just a standalone program. Phenomenal. That's phenomenal.

[0:11:04] Brett Johnson: Wow. So you had this established before the Pandemic, but of course, everything changed for everybody. How are you able to stay connected to the clients? And actually did the program itself change or maybe just the technology or the format?

[0:11:20] Deborah Hope: So Pandemic comes we are in 17 locations throughout the state through the Mass Council on Aging with Robert Hayes, the Tewkesbury Library. I had an on site meeting there, and we'd have about 25, 30 people at every meeting. And yes, then we go to Zoom, and all of a sudden, there's no geographic boundary, so everyone can be on the computer. And we had people from all over the state, mostly the surrounding area of Tewkesbury and the Merrimack Valley here, north of Boston. And then it grew. It grew and grew. More libraries heard about it. More libraries wanted to be involved. And again, because it was on Zoom, more libraries could participate and more people could participate. So the audience grew and the technology grew as well. Right. Does that answer your question, Brett?

[0:12:21] Brett Johnson: Oh, yeah, for sure. I guess because I was looking at it, I know everything. Like I just said, everything changed during the Pandemic. It just comes down to how it changed. I was curious about if the numbers actually were up or down for attendees because of whether there was actually a lack of jobs or those that wanted to work during the Pandemic. How that affected that too?

[0:12:41] Deborah Hope: Right? That's a really good question. Since 2019, people have come into this program, and this is one part of their networking, right? This program is one part of their networking. I encourage people to go to other venues to learn how to do PowerPoint, to learn their tools into network professional associations, alumni associations, network as much as possible. So people have touched this program, and since 2019, 111 people have landed jobs.

[0:13:14] Brett Johnson: Wow.

[0:13:15] Deborah Hope: That's a run rate. Up until 2022, that run rate was about one every two weeks. In 2023, here we are in our third month. In 2023 alone, we're running about one every ten days. So people are finding more jobs this year than in the past.

[0:13:35] Brett Johnson: That's very positive.

[0:13:37] Deborah Hope: It's very positive. It's very exciting. And I invite anybody who's found a job to come back and share pearls of wisdom. What worked for them when they were doing their job search. Which job search tool was the best for them? What did they think was a great idea? Give some pearls of wisdom.

[0:13:58] Brett Johnson: Have you included that in the program, bringing back alum, let's put it that way to talk.

[0:14:03] Deborah Hope: Oh, absolutely. Every week we have usually have somebody this past Wednesday, I do it every Wednesday. On the first and third Wednesdays, we do it in the morning for 2 hours. And then on the second and fourth Wednesdays we have an evening program that we just instituted in 2023. Yes, we bring back this past Wednesday. As I said, we congratulated five people who landed jobs in the past two to three weeks.

[0:14:30] Carol Ventresca: Wow, that's very exciting.

[0:14:32] Deborah Hope: And the jobs range from david just became the senior chemical process engineer at an multinational company, and then another person decided to go back to law school during the pandemic. It ranges. It really ranges. Another man was a boat builder for his career, but realized physically he couldn't build the boats anymore. Now he wants to be the facilities manager at Town Hall and he got the job. Wonderful.

[0:15:06] Carol Ventresca: Do you tend to see folks working more part time or full time positions?

[0:15:13] Deborah Hope: It really varies. I'd say for the most part it's full time, but it varies. It's probably a 60 40.

[0:15:21] Carol Ventresca: So Debbie, it sounds like this program has grown tremendously since the pandemic. It's all electronic online now, but you have many more people over a larger geographic area. How in the world are you keeping track of all these folks and how do you keep them on the right path?

[0:15:42] Deborah Hope: The program has grown tremendously, primarily because of the distribution and the word getting out through so many libraries. 62 libraries, 62. Newsletters, 62 BuzzFeeds right. So that's a big part of it and the popularity of it. I'm a partner with Massachusetts higher it's Mass hire used to be what we used to call the unemployment office. But here in Massachusetts, mass hire is the name of the unemployment office now so that they go out and get partnerships with corporations to help people get jobs. So they also present the program. A lot of people know it now because it's been around since 2015, so a lot more people know about the program. That's partly how it's grown. Again, with no geographic boundaries, anybody can join. I probably have about 50 people from out of state on our master list for both programs. We have about 500 600 people that we mail out this notice to every week, keeping track of them. So the program is meant to be self generative, meaning and that's the type of coaching I do, as well as an integral coach. How do we foster independence and how do we foster you to take your own initiative to attend the self assessment, to do them to write your resume in a different format, to get through the applicant tracking system, to create a LinkedIn profile, to learn how to use zoom. So it's self generative.

[0:17:29] Deborah Hope: The program is not meant to be tracking individuals. It's meant to be supportive and people reach out and I answer emails, but it's meant to be self generative.

[0:17:40] Carol Ventresca: I think you also mentioned to us that you give them some cues and tips on how to work together.

[0:17:46] Deborah Hope: Oh, absolutely, right, absolutely. That's part of what I encourage everyone to find and create job search buddies so that there's an accountability group, a small accountability group, maybe during the sessions. We do have breakout rooms where people can network in smaller groups than the usual 70 to 8500 people that come to the meetings. So we usually have a Zoom room full of about 70 to 100 anytime, any week. And so we have breakout rooms where we practice an exercise on one of the tools we're working on. And I say when you go into those groups, chat and see if anybody is up for meeting on a weekly basis, maybe to just accountability, just like a study group maybe we had in college. Right.

[0:18:38] Brett Johnson: I wanted to go back to your comment about that territory. You were just Boston for a bit. Now it's basically the whole state, even outside. What changes have you seen in the clients coming for the assistance? Are they changing the career fields? You see, mostly maybe was it a change from blue collar to white collar? I mean, education level, even the age range, did it become a little bit older, a little bit younger? What was the sense of the changes over that time period?

[0:19:05] Deborah Hope: Like I said, we were in 17 locations in 2021. There was a survey done and the typical, if you can say, and again, the audience changes, it's mostly professional people, about 60% who answered the survey, we were talking earlier, who answers the survey? Right. But 60% of the people had college degrees and 40%, we were surprised 40% had terminal degrees, meaning beyond masters. So highly educated, mostly professional people who had a 20 year plus successful career.

[0:19:45] Brett Johnson: Yeah, that's interesting that you saw that high of an education. And that speaks to that people just weren't expecting to have to go look for a job. They chose a career that you thought that I'm going to begin here and I'll end here, or doing the same thing somewhere else, like a professor, that they may change a university once or twice, possibly, but you expect to finish your career as a professor.

[0:20:11] Deborah Hope: So true, so true. And so many people thought, gee, I'm so skilled in this industry. And for many people like myself, I just turned. My company was acquired, so I turned and the next opportunity was there. Our Joe or Mary, my boss, would move to another company and I'd follow that person anywhere. Right. It was easy, right. And then all of a sudden, life has changed dramatically in a lot of respects in the workforce, and people are laid off. And the average age of this group is 55 to 65. And we're baby boomers. And I always say we're not done yet. We changed the world back in the we're still trying to change it. And we really want to make a meaningful impact. We want to be relevant. We want to work.

[0:21:04] Deborah Hope: We want to work. And a lot of people at this age and stage move from ambition to mission and invite people to really take a pause. This is a great gift. Take a pause and really think about what you want to do next. It doesn't have to be what you did for the last 2025 years. It doesn't have to be totally the same skill set that you used before. It could be something that you were dreaming about trying when you were swinging on a swing or out in the ball field or riding your bike. What do you really want to do? And somebody piped up and said, an astronaut. And I said, maybe. Who knows? Look who's going into space, right? 90 year olds going into space. So who knows? But the world is really different now.

[0:21:53] Deborah Hope: It really is. And your age really is your edge. You bring wisdom. You want to work. You bring passion. If you find it, find your passion. It's really important to find your passion and just go for it. Go for it.

[0:22:06] Brett Johnson: And what's odd is, I think, for that generation that's foreign to them to be able to act on a dream, that's not the way they grew up. If you think about it, they kind of followed what they did with their parents, worked, so they went to work.

[0:22:23] Deborah Hope: Oh, you mean the GE plant kind of thing.

[0:22:26] Brett Johnson: Okay, a little bit. Because the boomer generation is so large. I think the younger ones, now that cross between generation X and boomer, possibly we're seeing the last of that mindset that I think but we grew up, myself included, my mom and dad, they weren't entrepreneurs, but I am. How did I become an entrepreneur other than I'm just part of a different generation that embraces it, right? So I could see where it would be difficult to sit there. And I guess I'm to my point being, I could see the clients kind of going, you mean I'm allowed to dream? You mean I'm allowed to be able I could see that being you have to let that settle.

[0:23:11] Deborah Hope: You do have to let that settle.

[0:23:12] Brett Johnson: And realize, yeah, you can what do you want to do?

[0:23:16] Deborah Hope: Right? And it's not too late.

[0:23:18] Brett Johnson: It's not too late.

[0:23:19] Deborah Hope: And your age is your edge. Think about Way Crock, who started McDonald's when he was over 50, 60%. I think of Warren Buffett's. Wealth was created over 60. Granted, granted, he has a lot of wealth, but right.

[0:23:40] Carol Ventresca: When you think about us growing up in the baby boomer generation, we didn't have as much distraction as younger folks did, even BRETT'S generation had a lot more distraction, a lot of other opportunities, a lot of other things to do. We sort of played sports, but these guys played sports in school. Like you said, the emphasis for us was the expectation to go to work.

[0:24:12] Deborah Hope: Right. I'm a daughter of parents who experienced the depression, the deep depression in this country. So work was really the number one thing. If you can get work, that's great. My father was an entrepreneur. Like I said, my mom was a trailblazer in the investment business. But it was always work. It was always make sure you get a job. And I've been working since I was ten, right. When I got my babysitter certificate and passed my flyers out around the neighborhood on my bike.

[0:24:47] Carol Ventresca: Right. That brings back a memory.

[0:24:52] Deborah Hope: I know, right? It does. Right. So really exciting. It's a really exciting time. Take stock and remember now, probably tuition, you're finished with tuition payments. Maybe our mortgage is really low or none at all. Your parents, maybe they're still with you, maybe they're not. But the obligations of being a parent with toddlers and navigating college and high school and all those things is, is past now. So really it's your time. It's it's your time now. So really think about what you might want to do. Right. I hear a lot of wonderful stories from job seekers after 111 people have landed jobs. But the woman who went back to law school was so exciting.

[0:25:41] Deborah Hope: I was thrilled. She was too. And she decided to do it because when she was taking care of her aging parents, she got into a lot of understanding about the legal end of aging parents and the facilities she had to be involved with, and just understanding all the legalities of being an aging parent. Right. So she decided she could be an advocate in a good way. When the dean of the law school found out she was applying, he called her right away. He was thrilled to have a 60.

[0:26:13] Carol Ventresca: Something in his class that's wonderful.

[0:26:16] Deborah Hope: And offered her some tuition. Right.

[0:26:18] Carol Ventresca: Good. Oh, my gosh. Well, elder law is one of the topics we talk about, and there are a lot of issues that people need to take care of if they are older or if they have older family or friends that just need that help. So more power to her. That's wonderful.

[0:26:35] Deborah Hope: Right.

[0:26:36] Carol Ventresca: Well, let's talk about the program more specifically. It's a twelve week program, and as we mentioned, it's all online. What I love about all of the topics that you have, you put a lot of stress on understanding your career story, which is how we sort of started this podcast. It's critical because folks don't really understand the skills they bring to an employer. They don't see the value they bring to the employer because they don't see their career story number one as very interesting. And they also don't really grab hold of how they are strong and experienced and have wonderful skills. So if a job seeker can't get a handle on that and what their accomplishments are, they really can't make that case to an employer when they're applying for a job. So let's talk a little bit about tips that you give your clients an understanding and how to convey their own career story.

[0:27:40] Deborah Hope: Right. How do you fit decades into a few sentences?

[0:27:45] Carol Ventresca: Yes, exactly.

[0:27:46] Deborah Hope: How do you also present yourself to somebody my daughter's age? My daughter is 27. How do you present yourself because oftentimes you're being interviewed by somebody who is in their 20s. Right. Our thirty s. And how do you present what IBM used to look like or what GE once was? Right. A huge conglomerate. It's difficult and you have to practice. What we recommend is that you focus forward. Focus forward. Create brevity talk with our passion, with energy. And one of the key things is there's many ways that you can visualize it, but picture that you are driving a bus and you're driving your own bus of life and you've got a huge windshield in front of you. So you're focusing your career story on what you want to do and what you can do to solve their pain. Whatever the job description is, you can solve that pain because of maybe two or three projects that you worked on or five achievements way you were awarded the top sales award in the nation for building so many clients.

[0:29:08] Deborah Hope: Or as a project manager, you were able to bring the project in under budget and on time. Or maybe you invented something, maybe you worked in a clean lab and you were able to create or get the clinical product to market because you brought all these different people together. But brevity focus and what you want to do more of. Again, it's not an autobiography. Your career story is about the skills that you can apply to the job that you are applying for.

[0:29:45] Carol Ventresca: Right. Exactly.

[0:29:47] Deborah Hope: Their pain.

[0:29:48] Brett Johnson: So you're talking about the verbal piece of it right there. Let's talk about the physical, like the resumes and the COVID letters. It's successful for that next job. And the hunt. What tips do you have for job seekers as they are creating these documents?

[0:30:04] Deborah Hope: So, for example, something that's new now is the applicant tracking system. There are many versions of an applicant tracking system. So if you're applying for a job online, your resume for the statistics. The latest statistics show that there are about 250 to 300 applications for every one job. And how could any human look at that many? And they don't. So they have this software, it's artificial intelligence that will scan your application for keywords from the job description of what they're looking for. So step one is to look at the job description. Highlight keywords. Your resume is not a one and done. When I was growing up, you would get your resume typeset on linen paper and you would edit it. It was one resume chronological. This is what I did. Now, today, the resume is more of an active document. So for your job description, you create a resume that's more tailored to focus on the job description.

[0:31:13] Deborah Hope: So that is one aspect of it. Use action words, and I use a format. I recommend, highly recommend a format stars, so that you have a pocket full of stars, a situation, a task, an action, and a result. Rather than describing what your job entailed, rather than creating a job description, create what your achievements were in your experience. Raised revenues by 65% because I took over a new division, national Sales Award, five years in a row for increasing business by 20%. Things like that. Quantify it as much as you can. A situation, task, action, result. And those stars can be used in interviews. They can be used on your LinkedIn profile, they can be used in telling your career story, and they can be used on your resumes.

[0:32:16] Brett Johnson: So on a scale of one to 1010 being the hardest thing that they have to do is this process probably a ten.

[0:32:25] Deborah Hope: The resume?

[0:32:26] Brett Johnson: Yeah. Or the resume.

[0:32:29] Deborah Hope: Good question. A lot of people think, oh, I've got to get my resume perfect. No, it's really the whole package. How can you network as much as you can, pushing the button and applying online? About 75% of jobs are found through networking. So only 25% of jobs are found not networking, pushing a button and applying online.

[0:32:53] Brett Johnson: That's what I'm trying to tell my 23 year old daughter. It affects every age. That's the thing. This is not unique to an adult over 50 is the world. Yes, there is. And that's not to discount ageism. That is not what that means. But we're all fighting the same problems.

[0:33:16] Deborah Hope: We are all rowing a boat right in the same direction of trying to get a job. And ask your 23 year old daughter if she would rather hire somebody that she knew or that her girlfriend knew or her sweetheart knew or her professor knew. Then not right. That's networking. It's just a conversation, but networking, networking, networking. So I invite people to apply for the job online. Look on LinkedIn for who is a connection that you can make and who in your alumni organization or your professors or former bosses know? People in our social network who might. You never know if the person next door mowing the lawn might be your next connection. You never know. Maybe they know somebody at IBM. Where is one of the companies you want to work for?

[0:34:15] Carol Ventresca: Whenever I do a networking workshop for clients here in Columbus. Columbus. People think Columbus is a small city. It's actually the 15th largest city in the country. So there are a lot of people here. But I always mention that pork Kevin Bacon has to go through six degrees of. Separation. But in Columbus it's three. And because I'm Italian, it's actually two. Because we're all related. I'm sure it's the same in Boston. I mean, Boston is a huge metro area, but you all tend to know each other. Networking shouldn't be hard. It really shouldn't be hard because we know so many people getting to the next degree of person, from somebody we know to their friend, to their friend. It shouldn't be that difficult.

[0:35:08] Carol Ventresca: And I wonder if the difficulty in networking isn't so much that we're afraid to talk to people, we don't know what to talk to them about, because we haven't done all that internal thinking about what are we looking for in a job? Oftentimes job seekers are just trying to find a job, regardless of what it is, where it is. I need a job, I have bills to pay. Instead of sitting back doing all that internal process of, where are my skills? What do I want to do? Who needs these skills? Networking should just kind of roll off the tongue. And that's hard to do. That's hard to get to that point.

[0:35:53] Deborah Hope: Well, that circles back to when we first started the podcast, that this is one of the new things, so to speak. As I said many times during my career, the next job was there or you knew people who knew you. And the idea is to get out there and be known. The Justice Sonia Sonomayer says, in order to be successful in the world, you need to be known. So the Rolodex of the old days was, who is my network, my Rolodex? But the LinkedIn today is the new modern Rolodex. It's a two way Rolodex, right? So who knows you? About 75% of hiring managers and recruiters go to LinkedIn. So they get a resume, they go to LinkedIn. They are looking to fill a job engineer, electrical engineer. They go to LinkedIn. They are looking for a career coach, they go to LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is a huge tool in that it's a good beginning for a network. It's a very robust platform.

[0:37:01] Deborah Hope: It's a very robust program. For free. It's for free. You can find out who at a company works, is in your network already, or who went to your school, or who is part of the professional association that you're involved with.

[0:37:17] Carol Ventresca: Right. They're not just looking at you and your profile. They're looking to see who you know, who's connected to you, where you worked. If there are connections there that they know, there's a lot of bits and pieces on your network, on your LinkedIn profile, that you don't even realize are there, that the employers are looking at.

[0:37:35] Deborah Hope: Correct. And you can find a lot about the company and the people you'll be talking with, interviewing with. I often invite people to be sure that you look up who they are on LinkedIn and find out a little bit more about what they follow, what their interests are where they have worked before prior to this job, right.

[0:37:58] Carol Ventresca: What schools they went to, when you think about it. And when we went after our first job out of school, we had to go down to the downtown library and the business section and look up all of those old indexes to find out more about a company, even the address. Now you just punch it into your computer and all that information comes spewing back at you. So our 50 plus job seekers don't know how easy it is compared to going to the downtown library to look for that information. Yeah, that's great. That's great. So resumes are tough. Creating LinkedIn profiles can be tough. But I truly think that the hardest part of a job search is an interview. Yes. If you know the person because they're part of your network, that's a little easier. But I'm sure you have a bunch of tips to tell your clients on how to be a successful interviewer.

[0:38:55] Deborah Hope: Sure. And also, just to be clear, these job search tools, they can be tough, but they can also it depends on the lens that you're looking at them through. It's exciting that in the old days when we had to have a typographer do your resume, it was a huge issue when you saw a typo. Right. And you had to go back. Now it's just a click of a button and you can spew out another one. So I think the resume process and there's so many online tools and templates and different ways, so I invite people to create a plain resume for the applicant tracking system that's black and white standard categories, don't put any tables in. But then when you go for the interview in person, or even in addition to applying online email or not yeah, you can either email directly to a person or you can mail it or hand deliver it directly to a person. One with graphics on it, with color, one with maybe a column on the left side that now shows all your achievements and different ways that you can present your resume. So it's a lot of fun too. You can have a lot of fun with it. And networking can be a lot of fun. It can be. It really can be. So it depends on the lens that you use in going with these tools.

[0:40:23] Deborah Hope: It is different now. And by joining a group, a networking group that meets consistently and getting accountability buddies, you can commiserate and support each other with new ideas of what was working, how they're getting traction. Like some people for their core competencies on their resume, when they changed, they titrated a title, a sales engineer instead of a salesman. That got him a lot of traction, a lot more people looking at him. A sales engineer. He wasn't an engineer by training, but he was trained in sales enough to call himself an engineer in a different sense. Correct.

[0:41:06] Carol Ventresca: Wonderful. Yes.

[0:41:07] Deborah Hope: And another person was skilled in Sarbanes Oxley, that legislature that we had in the finance world after the 2008 issues we had. So when he put socks compliant in big bold letters at the top of his core competencies, that got him a lot of traction. When people can speak our or five languages and the job requires that, that's fabulous. Put that up there in bold letters. That's what I love about resumes. But the next job didn't require five languages or proficiency, so you change it. But it's so easy to do that with interviewing. I invite what we've already talked about, right? The brevity, the career story. Be brief in your interviews with your answers. Have that pocket full of stars that you did when you were writing your resume and your LinkedIn profile. Bring your energy, bring your passion. I had an executive, former executive from Corn Ferry, which is one of the largest headhunters in the world. I had him come and speak to the group, and I said, what would you recommend to an older job seeker going into an interview? And he just looked at me and he said, Gee, I never thought about it.

[0:42:28] Deborah Hope: When I was recruiting, I just wanted the best candidate. I didn't think about the age. He said, but what I would recommend highly is bringing in your energy. So if that takes doing 50 push ups before you go into the meeting or sorry, Amy Cuddy has a book in research, evidence based research, about how you pose in your posture and how it can change the chemistry in your brain. So be sure before you go in relax and relax before you go into the interview. And if that's a Zoom interview, you do some relaxation techniques beforehand. Or for me, I need to go for a long run or an extra long swim. I need to really get the willies out, so to speak. Or just bring some energy and bring your passion. Why are you the best candidate? And address the elephant in the room. I'm a mature worker and I bring wisdom, crisis management. When the lights go out, I know what to do, right? I pick up a pencil and I write the ticket to make sure that the stock gets purchased, right? And and we want to work.

[0:43:38] Deborah Hope: We're not rolling a suitcase in on Thursday and saying, I'm out of here for the weekend. Sorry, I can't be at that meeting tomorrow. We're not doing that. We want to work. Our generation wants to work. So I hope that answered some interview tip questions.

[0:43:52] Carol Ventresca: It did, and it indirectly answered. One thing that I always tell clients, resumes, as you said, they can be fun. There's a lot of work to it. But the better that you prepare your resume, the better interview you can give, because you've done all the research, you know what you can do. You know what you have done by creating that beautiful resume. So that's what you're talking to the interviewer about. You've done your homework. You can be a good interviewer. So it takes the willies our of doing the interview, because you're ready. You're ready to go. You've got your story down.

[0:44:36] Deborah Hope: Practice, practice, practice. Right? And I invite people to practice that career story, those star achievement stories, your resume. Practice it. Practice it. Practice it. Practice it with your dog. Practice it in your rearview mirror while you're driving. Practice it while you're walking in the woods to get grounded. Practice, practice, practice.

[0:44:57] Brett Johnson: Right. Another huge issue that older adults have is the assumption or misassumption that they can't do technology. They don't know technology, or even to the extreme, they're going to refuse to learn it. We have listeners who are listening to this podcast online on their phone, so obviously they can. But how can they prove their technology skills to a potential employer to kind of defeat that ageism look of like, okay, you're over 60. You probably know nothing about computers. How does one overcome that, knowing it probably exists?

[0:45:34] Deborah Hope: Some of the job seekers come to the Zoom Room for the first time and say, well, I've never used this. How do you use it? So we briefly go over some of the icons and how you use the Zoom Room. And I said, this is one of your job search tools. So that's the beginning of it, right? And the phone, the handheld phone, there's so much on here that you can do. We can send a rocket to the moon, apparently, with that technology, but embrace it. One colleague of mine invited people to sit with their grandchildren or sit with their nieces and nephews and start learning some of it. Another technique is to take courses online, get proficient in the whole office suite, get proficient in Excel, get proficient in Google Docs, and take courses where you can say certified in. One resume writer suggested having even a technical skills section on their resume if it's applicable for the job. One recent job seeker was interviewed by a small company, and the owner interviewed her and said, I really need you to need your procurement skills. You were fabulous for 30 years at this big company. I'm a smaller company, but I really need those skills. I also need you to know Excel. And she said, I can learn it, but I just don't know it at the moment, but I can learn it.

[0:47:04] Deborah Hope: So he rearranged the job description so that another person did the Excel part of it, because that person loved it and she was doing the procurement part. How do you make sure you order the bottles for the product and make sure the caps come too? Because that's what happens, right? Yes, but embrace it. Embrace it. Embrace it. And like I said, you can add a technical skills section to your resume if that's what the job for most of your jobs to show that Coursera has a lot of free courses. LinkedIn has free courses. You can find a lot of organizations that offer free courses in technical skills and learn it and practice it. Start Zooming with Friends, because most of the time one of your interviews will be with Microsoft Teams or with Zoom. So learn this technology. It is one of your tools.

[0:48:03] Brett Johnson: So many assume that they're going to have their grandparents retirement, leave the work world to enjoy whatever life brings. However, the media is telling us that baby boomers are not ready to retire, whether it's for personal satisfaction or now financial need. How do you describe your clients? Are they looking at full time employment, part time? Are they staying in their previous career field or moving into something new? I mean, we kind of touched upon that, but we didn't really dive deep into that. What are they looking for?

[0:48:35] Deborah Hope: Right? Well, that goes back to the original part of the podcast when we were talking about self assessment and how do you really look at what you might want to do in this next agent stage in Chapter? I have one former job seeker who was on Wall Street, had been in finance managing some of Hobbit's endowment money, and now he's moved from ambition to mission. So he is a part time controller and works for nonprofit organizations. The idea meaning that sometimes it's part time, sometimes it's full time. It just depends. And it's not like maybe when you're starting out in your twenty s and thirty s and thinking, if I do this now full time, I can grow to this, I can grow to that. A lot of people are trying different things now. It's very common. Very common. So if you want to be a barista at a Starbucks, go for it. There's no shame in work, no matter what it is. So try it. See if that's what you like. See if the hospitality industry piques your interest rather than maybe the accounting work you did.

[0:49:49] Deborah Hope: I don't know. Try a different industry, try lots of different things. And as I said before, it's not the same now. A lot of people want to keep working. They just want to work, be relevant. Some of it is for financial needs. Most of the time it is financial need. It's not poverty necessarily, but it's just financial need. They wanted to continue building their nest egg, whatever that means. And then we've got inflation, we've got reality, right? Life is very expensive, and it continues to be correct, right, I agree. But in general, boomers are not done yet. Boomers want to keep looking. They want to keep working.

[0:50:39] Carol Ventresca: We do. You and I are still out here doing our exciting bits and pieces of our work world. Sometimes he's still working full time. Sometimes someone's transition is smooth. It's a planned transition. They retire from a company knowing they want to go and do something else and sort of prepare themselves to get into it. But oftentimes, and we've seen that just recently with the pandemic, suddenly our whole world is in upheaval. They've either lost their job, as we so many did in the recession in the early 2000s, or their hours have been dramatically cut, or they way be doing one job and suddenly their employer says they need to do two. Our three jobs, cobble everything together. Do you have some specific tips on how to get someone on the right path just to get past the critical part of losing a position, sort of the angst part of having to move on into something new?

[0:51:54] Deborah Hope: That makes sense. Yeah, we do touch on that, especially in the first session with the self assessment. There's a huge piece of grief here. Losing your job is one of the top five stressors in your life, especially if you have dedicated your career to a company, to your work. You find yourself, suddenly the rug has been pulled out from underneath you. I have one job seeker who built a division. It's one of the top revenue producers for the company. And all of a sudden they decided they want to go in a different direction. So the division is now under the management of somebody else, but he's still part of that team. So how do you sort of lick your wounds if you want to see.

[0:52:49] Carol Ventresca: That kind of going through the grief stages, right?

[0:52:52] Deborah Hope: You do have to go through the grief stages. And don't ignore it. You can try to suppress it, but don't ignore it. It's painful. It's sad. It's really sad. And forgiveness is important. It doesn't mean that you condone what happened to you. And there can be some anger. Deal with it and maybe take some temporary time to work with a counselor who can help you. A grief counselor. It can be like losing a spouse. It can really be a huge traumatic issue. So deal with that and don't ignore it because it is a painful thing. And when you're ready, start the adventure and really start the assessment and really take a look at way.

[0:53:43] Deborah Hope: Has life given you this opportunity that you had? This whole how do you let go of the cherished outcome that you once had?

[0:53:55] Carol Ventresca: And I think one of the things that we always used to talk about with our clients is that you're not in this boat alone. Other people are going through the same steps and take advantage of holding each other's hand and commiserating together and then move on.

[0:54:10] Deborah Hope: Yeah, I had a very emotional first timer come to this meeting a few weeks ago and he just said at the end of the session, he just said, oh my God, I didn't know that this was so wonderful. He said, I felt so alone. This is so helpful. It's really great to have a networking group that you can go to right.

[0:54:32] Carol Ventresca: During the recession in the early 2000s. We heard about an individual who was laid off from his job, and he was at a very high executive level in a large company here in town. He was so embarrassed, he hid in his house. He wouldn't even go out and get his mail until it was dark. So his neighbors didn't see him home. They couldn't figure out what was going on. Suddenly, one of his neighbors figured out what had happened, that he was home, went over and talked to him, helped him network, and he got another job, literally immediately. And here he had wasted a whole year of hiding from everyone, and what a shame that is.

[0:55:16] Deborah Hope: I highly recommend that. Just reminds me of a man called Auto with Tom Hanks. It's a new movie that's out it way up for an Academy Award. It really is a very good movie about pain and grief, right? A really good segue into that. Right? I also recommend people look at the intern with Robert de Niro.

[0:55:40] Carol Ventresca: Oh, I love that movie.

[0:55:42] Deborah Hope: We all loved it. We loved it when it came out. And I invite people to stop and look at it again, just at this age and stage and where you are, right?

[0:55:52] Carol Ventresca: Right.

[0:55:53] Brett Johnson: Yeah. We always ask our guests if they have any last words of wisdom. Not that you haven't given Autonom already, but maybe that final one. As we leave this episode, do you have any suggestions or advice for our listeners?

[0:56:08] Deborah Hope: I do. And Catherine Graham from The Washington Post has a fabulous saying that I always have as a byline on my email, to love what you do and feel that it matters. How could anything be more fun? So I just really invite people to really look at this age and stage as a new chapter, maybe an encore career, maybe an opportunity just to find something new in your life.

[0:56:38] Carol Ventresca: That's wonderful. Deborah, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been phenomenal, and it's a great example how we can help our local central Ohioans and their job search based on what you've done in Massachusetts. So, listeners, thank you for joining us. And don't forget to check our show notes for contact information and resources on our website, which is www. Looking forward our way we are looking forward to hearing from you, your feedback on this and any of our podcast episodes.