Age limit on complete career change?

[Deleted member 26715]

Don’t put your age on your application

And don't put you left school in 1980

 

[neil_merseyside]

And don't put you left school in 1980

Or have 'O' levels

 

[kynikos]

(In the UK) You can only ask for someone’s date of birth on an application form if they must be a certain age to do the job, for example selling alcohol.

 

[Accy cyclist]

I was self employed for 14 years before I had to give my job up aged 56 due to health problems. It was fairly hard physical work which I've mostly done all my working life. I was unemployed for 4 years, until finding shop work around 12 months ago. During my period of unemployment I applied for many jobs but hardly received replies never mind interviews, probably because of my listed disabilities on their application forms. My now employer is also what I'd call a friend as he owns a shop I used to 'hang out' in and buy stuff. If I hadn't known him I don't think I'd be working there as I think he took me on feeling a bit sorry for me, having been unsuccessful finding work for 4 years.

 

[Arrowfoot]

OP is in his 40s. Best to do it now. Go all out.

 

[cyberknight]

55 next year and I'm only just managing my job,been here 18 years and I have always done manual jobs so I have built up a number of niggles over the years and even with my fitness which is good for my age I'm constantly aching.
Mini CK is only 10 so I'm working till I drop.Unless the company offers a very good early retirement package I cannot afford to leave and retrain.Company policy is "you are athletes" although they have talked about accomodating aging work force the upshot is that you have to go 100% all the time lumping stuff and sweating even in the he middle of winter.

 

[annedonnelly]

Skillset? I find that's a difficult one. Qualifications is easy, work history is easy but skills. For me I can't get past the knowledge part of skillset. But that's another issue.

I'm sure you've loads of transferrable skills. You just need to see the things you've done in a slightly different way. Have you deal with people in other departments? Then, that's "customer service" even if it's not external customers. Have you written reports? Then you can write reports in other contexts. Scheduled a meeting? That's organisational skills.

I think you have to consider the nitty gritty of what you've done on a day to day basis in your jobs and identify the skills involved. There are probably things that you consider are so easy that you don't have to think about them, but to some people they might be incredibly difficult. They'll be valuable skills.

 

[Time Waster]

If the company in question is looking for someone with the requisite qualifications and experience plus wider life experience they can bring to the company - 100%.

If they're looking for someone with no life skills who can be pushed around - 0%.

And it's the former one I'd want to be working for (and have).

Or the younger person might be better to train into the company's way of doing things. Older people have greater chance of coming in with habits that don't work in the new employer.

It's not necessarily about pushing or not being able to push people around. Not least because IME younger people have often been brought up through an education system and in an age when they've been developed personally, socially better than my generation was. There's a confidence I don't think even my grammar school generation got. That might very well stop bosses pushing the young around better than age does.

 

[Time Waster]

Skills? I don't see skills when I look into what n I've done. They'll be there but I'm blind to what others can see in that respect.

 

[Time Waster]

What's your views on academic qualifications and their value? Do degrees fade in significance with time? I've got two degrees but they're 20 years old now. I've not really used them in that the technical subjects they were I've not gone strictly into a relevant career. There's been no technical development or CPD on them so I see them as not strictly relevant to jobsearch. Which is partly my issue with career change.

 

[bikingdad90]

@Time Waster, depends on the role, in the professional accounting world, junior positions are usually AAT where as more senior roles are usually for a fully qualified accountancy body; partly because of the insurance and indemnity required behind auditing and giving advice to firms.

A degree is less relevant to accountancy but gives good business and commercial acumen.

Is there opportunities within the business to move around? Knowledge of the business and how it works etc can’t be bought in, it needs to be learnt and that is why internal candidates are often favoured as they have the commercial edge.

 

[Time Waster]

SME. Moving around means moving from sales to quality to production to purchasing to H&S to environmental to IT to employee relations and on to UN peacekeeping duties. In fact you go where you're needed as do the owners/directors and often their families. Officially management but when 2/3rds of the owners turn their hand to production when needed or for certain parts or customers then there's not really an excuse for getting out of it yourself. It makes for a change if I've had a morning of bureaucracy and paperwork.

Actually paperwork isn't as much of a pain as customers web based systems we are increasingly having to get involved with. I checked recently and I have 15 different usernames and passwords for customer and even supplier systems. Each one requires a new password every 3 to 6 months with exacting criteria. One needs at least 16 characters with a set of extra criteria 10 rules looks. I tell you it is very hard thinking up new passwords for a couple of systems.

I think you learn fast and widely working in an SME. Just wish I could sell this experience. That's my biggest struggle after seeing the skills my career has given me since leaving university for the last time.