I asked an AI to write an article about how long career transitions should take...

I get this question about job search more than nearly any other, as I’m sure my peers would attest. I think I have some good answers (I’d better have, after all these years), but thought I might jump on the AI bandwagon and ask ChatGPT what it thinks. My reaction to its very quick submission was “not terrible, but not exactly what I’ve concluded.” Check out ChatGPT’s answer’s below, and let me know what you think in the comments.


Searching for a new job can be a daunting task, especially if you are not sure how long it will take to find one. While there is no set timeline for finding a job, several factors can influence the length of your job search.

In general, the length of time it takes to find a job can vary based on your experience, qualifications, industry, and the current job market. The good news is that with some effort and patience, you can increase your chances of finding a job faster.

Let's take a look at some factors that may affect how long it takes to find a job:

Experience and Qualifications
Your level of experience and qualifications can play a significant role in how long it takes to find a job. If you have a highly sought-after skill set or advanced qualifications, you may be more in demand and able to secure a job quickly. However, if you are new to the job market or have limited experience, it may take longer to find a job that matches your skillset and interests.

Industry
The industry you are interested in working in can also influence how long it takes to find a job. Some industries are more competitive and have a higher demand for skilled workers, making it easier to find a job quickly. Other industries may be more niche or specialized, making it more challenging to find job openings that align with your skills and interests.

Current Job Market
The current job market can have a significant impact on how long it takes to find a job. During periods of economic growth and low unemployment rates, there may be more job opportunities available, making it easier to find a job quickly. Conversely, during times of economic downturn or high unemployment rates, job opportunities may be scarce, making it more challenging to secure a job.

Networking and Job Search Strategies
Your networking skills and job search strategies can also affect how long it takes to find a job. Building a strong professional network and utilizing effective job search techniques, such as networking events, job fairs, and online job boards, can increase your chances of finding a job quickly.

In general, the length of time it takes to find a job can vary widely based on these factors. On average, it takes job seekers about 3-6 months to find a new job. However, this timeline can be shorter or longer depending on your circumstances.

If you have been searching for a job for a while without any success, it may be time to reevaluate your job search strategies. Consider reaching out to a career coach or recruiter for advice on how to improve your job search techniques and increase your chances of finding a job quickly.

In conclusion, while there is no set timeline for finding a job, several factors can influence the length of your job search. By taking steps to increase your qualifications, utilizing effective job search strategies, and networking with professionals in your industry, you can increase your chances of finding a job faster.

AGEISM in Career Transition (and How to Get Past It)

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Yes.   Ageism exists. It’s daunting to be in your 50’s, 60’s, and maybe 70’s and facing a job search when you’re convinced most hiring managers are not going to be interested in hiring you.  

This, of course, is demotivating, and many accept it as a reason to give up – and some people don’t even bother to be proactive as a consequence of that false belief.  Clients have reported they’ve made a passive effort, relying mostly on postings, with the feeling they’re not going to do particularly well, or will have to settle for something far less appropriate than their experience and skill set might indicate.  Sometimes, that means depending only on postings (5-6% of the market), recruiters (7%), and friends (should be up to 85%), and not the real work of career transition, which is building new relationships and rebuilding old ones, person by person – and keeping those people “warm.”  (Translation:  That means making sure they remember you via several interactions.)  

Mostly, the convictions that older people are not viable in the workplace are simply not borne out.   Why is there a fairly widespread acceptance of the notion that older workers might not be worth hiring?  

The Myths

One commonly held notion is that older people will work less, show less energy, and be less effective. Definition of “myth” - a widely held but false belief or idea.

Did anyone tell Ruth Bader Ginsburg that?  Or Tom Brady, who is considered ancient for a professional athlete?  Or Robert Caro, the two-time Pulitzer prize-winning biographer, who at 86 spent a year in Vietnam to complete his research on Lyndon Johnson?  

The list of successful older workers is long, and the facts frequently destroy the myth.  

Another notion is that older workers will be less flexible, less willing to adapt.

Or, yet another - older people will resist new technology – or any technology, for that matter.  

One major fear of employers is the assumption that older workers will be expensive, or even a threat to the person who hires them.  

There is also the fear that older people are more likely to have health problems.  True.  But true for everyone?  

Solutions

Numbers.  There are too many hiring managers, recruiters, and Human Resources professionals (Human Capital Management?  People?  Talent Management?  Manpower Planning?  Human Asset Management?  I wish I could remember all the inane corporate euphemisms.  Why couldn’t we stick with Personnel?) who buy into the negative perceptions about older people.  They’re trying to match resumes and LinkedIn profiles with job specification lists.   Many of these staffing professionals will eliminate well qualified candidates based on paper or digital representations, and frequently bypass the best candidates.  Or manage to find things on a resume that play into an irrational bias.  Resumes or LinkedIn can’t talk for you, but an in-person meeting enables a job applicant to defuse any potentially negative perceptions.  


No matter how many ways career advisors advise older clients to remove college dates of graduation from the resume, or eliminate the first few jobs, experienced staffing professionals will be able to figure out that the applicant might be over 45 or 50.  

What to do?  Those concrete decision makers don’t account for everyone who hires new employees.  There are creative hiring managers, and creative Human Resources professionals, who can see beyond age, beyond the resume and LinkedIn profile, and see the value in the candidate.  How to get to these people?  Numbers.  The more people you see in your relationship-building efforts, the more likely you are to find the more flexible, non-concrete, thinkers.  It’s a matter of odds, pure and simple.  This means working extra hard at building a more extensive network, increasing the opportunities of meeting the right people in the process.  

Many years ago, when I was a staffing officer with what was then called The Chase Manhattan Bank (and no, the bank was not named for one of my ancestors), I met a 32-year-old applicant.  I saw a gap in his resume for the previous year, and asked about it.  He told me that he and his wife (and one-year old!) had decided to take off a year and travel around the world; they figured this would probably be the only time they’d have the opportunity.  This intrigued me, so I asked about the experience (I was also curious as to how they handled it with a one-year old!).  He told me he and his wife had been having trouble getting a job since returning, because employers had asked them about the year, and were put off by a 32-year-old and his wife setting back their career by taking a year off.  

There are so many things wrong with that line of thinking that I can’t get into all of it here, but the main point is that I thought this applicant was more interesting and more creative than most, a risk taker, and a thoughtful person with depth.   He had found the right person (those odds mentioned above were working in his favor), in terms of who might hire him, but many he had met had the opposite impression, that something was wrong with him.  By expanding his network as much as possible, he was able to find those who thought his year off was an interesting asset.

I was careful to send him to a division executive who thought as I did, and the candidate was hired.  It won’t always happen quite that way, but, again, the more relationships you build the better the numbers will be for you.

Another way to defeat the misperceptions about older workers is to show energy from the outset.  Even with an approach email.   When I was first a staffing professional, I recall learning quickly that enthusiastic, high energy applicants were far more likely to be hired.  No one wants to hire someone who looks frightened, anxious, or devoid of energy.  Decision makers like an applicant to not only show enthusiasm, but to show excitement about the position.  Think of the networking meetings and interviews as performances.  You may not like the process much; or you might get anxious.  It doesn’t really matter what you’re feeling; it matters how you’re perceived.  Yes, it sounds superficial, but presenting in an energetic and enthusiastic manner goes a long way.  It does for all ages, but particularly for older job applicants who are overcoming a misperception.  

Show excitement about past positions.  As I say to everyone I meet professionally, your career has been “sunshine, light, and success.”  No complaints, no negatives.   Negatives only reflect on you, not the former employer.  You’ve loved your career, have had significant accomplishments to relate, and are excited about this next phase.  

Think before a networking meeting or an interview about how you’re going to pre-empt the interviewer’s misconceptions, and show energy and enthusiasm right away.  Figure out a way to talk about how you have successfully used technology, for example.  When you’re confronted with a remark about how you might be overqualified (this is almost always about money issues), say that perhaps you’ve miscommunicated; the job you’re applying for is a great fit because…   Make it tough for people to throw that overqualified thing at you.  

A note:  Many older men have asked me about hair issues, i.e., whether to hide hair loss, or dye gray hair.  No.  You want to be hired for who you are, plus a lot of people with dark black hair at 60 look, um, a little strange.  Of course, men and women want to dress appropriately and well.  Did I need to write that?  Not always sure.  Again, showing energy and enthusiasm will trump any appearance issues.  

Once these misperceptions are fixed, it’s time to polish up relationship building/networking skills, of course.  With the suggestions above, the search should go better than you had feared.  Don’t give into the myths. Keep this in mind whenever you face ageism.  And then…move on.  

For more on this topic, you can view my recent webinar:
Ageism in Your Career Transition, And How to Get Past It.

I Love The New York Times, But…

I love Gail Collins, Charles Blow, Frank Bruni, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristoff, Brett Stephens, Tom Friedman, the Editorial Board, the sports section, Arts and Leisure, Real Estate; I could go on.  You get the point.  Mostly, I admire the integrity of the paper.  And that it’s so well written.  

But.

There has been a too-frequent gap in quality when it comes to career/employment reporting.  This usually happens at the worst possible times – in times of economic dislocation, unemployment, and fear.  I’ve personally witnessed these gaps during the 1982 recession, the 1987 stock market crash, the 1991 real estate crash, the 2000 dotcom crash, the 2008/9 economic meltdown, and now, the 2020 pandemic.  

Mostly, The Times has reacted with what I think of as hysteria when it comes to employment issues.  Frequently inaccurate, misleading, and damaging.  The latest was a major front page piece a few days ago, in which the reporter did what many have done in the past – cherrypicked a few people who have had a rough time during the past couple of months, and then globalized those experiences.  The conclusions drawn, basically that everything is melting down for everyone, are simply not true.  It’s not the case that it’s impossible get or keep a job across the board, or that people are not able to get interviews, let alone jobs, to name a few of the negative conclusions presented.  

I remember vividly, in 2008/9, several Times articles repeatedly saying that if people were out of work for long periods of time it would be nearly impossible for them to get a new job, and that they were somehow permanently stigmatized.  The only word that comes to mind when I read such pieces is… nonsense.  A well-prepared, positive, and non-defensive explanation regarding those time periods is what job seekers need.  I’ve rarely met anyone who’s encountered this as a major stumbling block when they’re well-prepared with a response to questions about the period of unemployment.  This whole negative way of thinking about periods of unemployment strikes me as very 1950’s.  

Yes, there are certain professional areas that have become catastrophic recently, especially hospitality/tourism.  And a few others.  I recently had a client in a group who announced that he couldn’t possibly find any job in his discipline (hospitality) and at his level (very senior).  By the end of the group meetings, he realized that there were alternatives in which he could utilize his considerable skills and experience.  There were even alternatives for investment bankers in 2008!  But, if those people paid too much attention to The Times’ estimate of their chances, they might have given up.  

These articles, because of the trust so many readers have in The Times, can easily derail a search – and have.  After all, The Times said so!  Unfortunately, the material in these articles is so frequently inaccurate.  I have rarely met in my private, corporate, or business school practices any client for whom there wasn’t a solution to a difficult employment period.  

The big difference in technique this time is the ability to intelligently use Zoom/Skype/FaceTime as a primary interaction method.  

As a matter of fact, I think that this moment is an ideal time to be doing a search.  Maybe a combination of “don’t let a crisis go to waste” and get ahead of the competition.  Since others believe that there are no jobs available, they drop out.   The proactive job seekers see opportunity when others disappear from the market.   They can see that chances increase, that it’s easier to get networking meetings, and that in fact there might be less competition for available jobs (but certainly not through postings).  

Many of my clients have done well during this period, often landing new situations by never having physically met anyone at their new jobs – and starting the jobs the same way, virtually.  They do have one major thing in common, which is that all the bad and frightening news of the past few months has not changed their drive to get the new job.  They’ve adjusted to changing markets, changing emphases in their professional areas, and new virtual search techniques.  

I’m not saying you should ignore articles in The Times about career transition.  Just be careful to not believe everything you read.  Read elsewhere, too.  Actually, I’ll take this opportunity to suggest you might want to carefully read articles on a daily basis on LinkedIn!  You’ll get better information, in general, from people who are directly engaged in career management, and from other news sources as well.

Time to get going!