Wiser Worker Blog

In honor of Friday the 13^th I thought we could celebrate it by celebrating why older workers will substantially benefit any business.  

1.    Everything can be improved: Experienced workers take pride in their work.

2.    You get what you expect: Older workers stay on task until it is completed.

3.    Pleasure in the job put perfection in the work: Older workers have a knack for paying attention to detail.

4.    Finally being old pays off: Older workers have many years of experience

5.    Only those who do nothing make no mistakes: Older Workers make excellent mentors and role models

6.    Act the part and you will become the part: The older worker is not afraid to voice his opinions

7.    Concentration is the secret of strength: Less likely to play office politics.

8.    The best vision is insight: They can be left unsupervised more often and get the job done efficiently.

9.    Just go out there and do what you’ve got to do: Willing to stay over and work until the job is completed. 

10. Quality is everyone’s responsibility: Older Workers often know where problems may occur and how to prevent it

11. Only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it: Older employees are able to take things in stride and find workable solutions without “losing it.” 

12. Built in Training Department:  Older workers can easily train younger workers and encourage their progress.

13. We all have ability. The difference is how we use it : Usually they only have to be told once how to do a job.

You have the power to change; Hire an Older Worker!

Baby Boomer and Older Workers are surfing the web and STOP the presses they spend more time online than the average teenager. Your grandparents use the internet for more than email cute picture of their grandkids. It’s time we start looking at this demographic as a major player. Let’s face it they’re not going off into retirement and playing golf and sipping on martinis. However they may be using the internet to make reservations at the club for only the best tee time.

So what exactly are they doing?  Well……..everything shopping, communicating and well socializing with their friends! When they’re not surfing the web for the latest information they’re befriending people on Face book, tweeting the latest rage on Twitter and following the latest trends on blogs.

Baby Boomers and Older Workers:

Regularly use email 94%

Look up health and medical information 71%

Keep up to date on the latest news 70%

Are spending your inheritance on online gaming 47% (You better keep working!)

Managing their finances and banking 59%

Hitting the latest sales as they shop online 71% (highest % among any generational group)

Looking for work on WiserWorker.com

So the lesson here is that you better be taking this demographic seriously and learn from them as they want to teach you what they know!

Source: Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM).

This morning I was reading okay watching the news and I came across the following article: “Over 50, and zero job offers”.  Okay that’s just silly; yes the job market is tough I give you that however; you need to remember this:  As an older worker have something that other applicant’s lack…..EXPERIENCE.

Your only obstacle is connecting with employers who are ready and willing to hire YOU. Get started today by creating the right resume, connecting on the social media sites that will get your connected and of course visit WiserWorker.com the only site for older workers!

Functional Resume usually starts with summary of qualifications to put emphasis on skills particular areas of focus. Examples might include: customer service, word processing, computers, accounting, data archiving, office, telephone reception and problem solving. Rather than listing specific details, the job seeker lists responsibilities and achievements under the three main highlighted areas. The employment history is simply listed underneath the functional areas followed by education, training and other complimentary sections.

LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network or create a network.  Their mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. Jump right in and create a account and make sure you select that you are looking for a job. You will be amazed at how many people seek you out because you are qualified.

WiserWorker.com YOU already know the most valuable resource online helping older workers get back in the workforce. WiserWorker.com is dedicated to providing quality employment opportunities and resources to people just like you.  

Good Luck!

I created and represent a Wiserworker.com and that’s the primary reason why I tend to write on topics that matter/relate to that demographic. It’s where my passion lies, I know there are other demographic groups out there that are just as strong, but I feel this is the demographic that needs help and where I am needed.  WiserWorker.com was created for the older worker, however we knew at that time there were many job seekers and none were ever to be forgotten.

We honor all types of job seekers through our specialized niche job boards; for the trucking industry we have CareersinGears.com for all positions relating to the medical field we have Healthcareerweb.com and then for all jobs that fall into the hourly job category we have EmploymentGuide.com and last but not least we have Jobalot.com our aggregator site.  You can see we cover the spread when it comes to servicing the job seeker! Our goal is to leave no stone unturned.  

Last week I was contacted by a fellow blog writer who respectively disagreed with my position on the older worker being the BEST job candidate…. he offered his opinion and on many levels I think we agree, but just see things from a different prospective. George Lenard, Owner-Editor of George’s Employment Blawg offered the following statement: “Companies shouldn’t be recruiting older workers; they should be recruiting better workers — and realizing that many older workers may meet their needs — as may many younger workers.  We no more need to feed demographic divisions during tough times for all workers than we need to fan racial prejudice or anti-immigrant sentiments.” 

I quickly returned his email and said “WOW, can I quote you?”  George said sure but he thought I would ticked off at this response…..Heck no!  I love when people have opinions even different opinions.  What makes me mad is when people DON’T have an opinion. The fact of the matter is George is right employers should hire the BEST candidate for the any job. Yet all too often age becomes a hiring factor and it shouldn’t, older workers are essential to our labor market.  Just last week I read that the average age of the American worker is 40.  Hence why WiserWorker.com was created, to create a place where job seekers over the age of 40 can come to get job advice and or search for jobs.

George we don’t disagree, I just think that employers overlook the older worker and that’s why I spend so much time on this topic. Thank you for having the opinion and sharing it. YOU make a difference through opinion and sharing it.

George Lenard, the founder and editor of George’s Employment Blawg, has over twenty years of experience in all aspects of labor and employment law, including preventive law as well as litigation. George created George’s Employment Blog in May 2003 as an outgrowth of his online reading in the field of employment law. As the blog grew, he also started reading and posting more about topics of general interest in the employment and HR area.

Yesterday I blogged about a Baby Boomers taking to the open road with a second career in the trucking industry, I thought it might be fun to keep the spirit of the open road alive by sharing an experience I had over the weekend.  Over the weekend I flew on my favorite airline Southwest Airlines; over time you will learn that I am a Southwest Junkie!  Today I have ONE more reason to prove they are the best in the business.  I was only minutes into the flight when I took note of the age of the flight attendants, they all seemed to be of the older worker category, and I thought wow how neat. It wasn’t until the end of the flight I realized the treat that was in store for me!

During my flight I got a chance to catch up with one of the attendants: Tom. Who I would later learn was on his THIRD career. He had already retired from a career in the banking industry spent some years as a college professor teaching finance and had officially retired from the working world 8 years ago or so he thought.

At the age of 56 Tom retired and thought he was done working and it wasn’t too long before he discovered Southwest Airlines. It was then that he found his third career as a flight attendant with the airlines; His wife saw he was having so much fun as a flight attendant it wasn’t long before she joined the airline as well!  So now they both work a very flexible 3 day work week and enjoy 4 days off. They try and organize their work schedule in a fashion that enables them to have the same days off. So they can still have time to enjoy life.

He initially went back to work for the benefits and the freedom he knew that working with the airline would give him, he has found a home at Southwest Airlines and I think they have found valuable employee in Tom. Where else can you get paid to travel?

I hope that you get a chance to fly with Tom he loves his job and you can tell!  It was the best customer service I have ever had 30,000 miles in the sky. There might be 51 ways to leave your lover and 6 ways to exit a plane but I hope Tom and Southwest Airlines never part ways! 

As a company we selected this statement to represent WiserWorker.com and our older worker program and almost 2 years later I look back and think of all that this statement stands for: Older Workers, Baby Boomers and helping them find jobs.  I remember sitting around the conference table trying to select a statement that truthfully described what we were doing and what we hoped to accomplish in the future and thinking “hmmm I wonder if WiserWorker.com will live up to this”. 

So what are we doing to help you the Older Workers find work?

As company our hope is that through the continue education and awareness process we will help make a change in the recruitment world, because recruiters are the people who are make the hiring choices. Still I think older job seekers have doubts…so our job is not done.  I wrote a blog about benefits and the part time employee. I received feedback asking: “do these companies really in fact hire older workers?”  Well the companies in that particular blog are part of AARP’s national employer team as well as advertisers on our site.  I have in the past worked with them and to the best of my knowledge not only do they hire older workers they make it a practice.  Apply with confidence and know you are the best candidate!

WiserWorker.com: We created an online job board specifically designed for the baby boomers and older worker demographic. We make changes to the site based on feedback we get from job seekers. Our product was designed to be user friendly and for you, so if you would like to see a change email and I will see what I can do.  

Job Fair Series: Along with The AARP Foundation are co-hosting our biggest job fair series ever.  Last year The Employment Guide hosted over 40,000 job seekers in 40 cities nationwide and we are here to top those numbers in 2008.

Helping YOU the job seeker; I implore you to confidently attend job fairs. Contact your local WorkSeach program provided by the AARP Foundation, you will be amaze!  Finally apply for jobs that interest and share your knowledge and experience with others

WiserWorker.com has been online for 6 months and our job fair series is in its second year, while we have scratch the surface of the older worker issue, and sure we have made some strides, I realize that we have a lot to do still.   Our goal is to create a marketplace where older workers can easily find the job of their dreams. We aren’t there yet but we are closer.

I am Amy Hoster the Business Development Manager for WiserWorker.com; I wanted to share with you our story, the journey that brought The Employment Guide to create WiserWorker.com. I am more than a manager for a project, or maybe this is more than just a ‘job,’ it’s an honor to have been given the opportunity to help create a tool that will ultimately help older jobseekers find jobs. As a manager of the product I serve many roles within our organization, starting with the older worker initiative and ending with the creation of Wiser Worker. It’s been a long road to get WiserWorker.com to where we are now, and we have plenty more work to do, but today let me share with you how we got started so you can get a better picture of where we are going.

The Problem:

Believe it or not our older worker initiative started with a one sales person from the Phoenix Employment Guide, he came into my office one day and said;

“Amy we need to help older workers reenter the job market so I invited the local AARP program participants to the job fair next week”.

Great idea, but what I didn’t know was that job fair was going to change our business and ultimately send The Employment Guide down a road that would be full of challenges and in the end rewards. A week later at that job fair I met a man in probably his late 60’s who asked if I could help him find a resume. He didn’t know what a resume was but he knew he needed one and he wanted me to show him were he could get one. Luckily we had a resume specialist at that event who was able to help him create a resume, but it was that day I knew we needed to help the older worker.

Start of a Solution

I was also fortunate our event the Phoenix AARP Foundation Project Director Maria Ramirez-Trillo who sat down and educated me on how they helped the community. The next day I set out to work on a plan with the goal of helping senior workers in markets all across the country, I figured that if we could do it in Phoenix we could duplicate our efforts in all of our markets. After months of planning I was able to start setting our program in motion by working with the AARP Foundation on a national level with their Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP). The Department of Labor funds SCSEP programs in markets all across the country and work with many different partners.

Together with the AARP Foundation, our first project would be to create a digest size “resource book” that would hold all the essential information a job seeker would need to know to re-enter the job market. Our first run we published 15,000 books and that only got us through about 3 months, we are now in our 3^rd issue of that publication book titled Wiser Worker Survival Guide due out late this summer, pick up a copy at any of our job fairs or drop me a line at amy.hoster@wiserworker.com.

The Job Fairs

By this point in the older worker project was heating up and The Employment Guide decided that there was a need to hold an events that would highlight jobs and opportunities for the older worker. We strive to create an environment were we could invite mature workers to a locations in their local neighborhoods where they could look for a job. The Employment Guide is no stranger to the world of job fairs and since we started our program with a single job fair in Phoenix it seemed fitting that we move forward to create a job fair program that would not only honor but benefit the older job seeker. In June of 2007 we started planning the 1^st Annual National Employ the Older Worker Job Fair Series honoring the Department of Labor’s older worker programs. We consulted with Department of Labor and The AARP Foundation to ensure the events were created and formatted so that the older worker would get the most out of the event. Employmentguide.com is one of the only job boards that’s listed on the Department of Labors Resource Page. When the last event was held we had hosted over 47 job fairs in 40 states in over 6 weeks, when our events were attended by over 40,000 job seekers. Our events are held in honor of the Department of Labor’s National Older Worker Week held during the last week of every September.

The Website

It was then when the concept of WiserWorker.com was born, the product was created so that there would be a method of helping older job seekers regardless of where they lived. Our goal was to create a internet product rich with resources for the fast growing demographic in the country and with a job board that will ultimately be tailored for the older more mature job seeker. We are still developing our product and value feedback from users, because after all we started this product be finding out what the public needs and creating a product based on that information.

Hopefully you have a better picture of how committed we are to the working adult. Our program started a little over 2 years ago, frankly speaking I don’t think any of us knew we would end up where we are now. We have a great partnership with our flagship product EmploymentGuide.com and our 2008 Job Fair Series is in motion this year with over 65 events. We will be updating the job fairs section as we get closer to the events. Please visit our site and send me your feedback. What do you don’t like is just as important as what you like. I am interested in what changes would you like to see in the future. I can be reached at amy.hoster@wiserworker.com or 623-869-8888 Ext 238

(photo by danesparza)