Experience puts paid to mature worker myths

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

Last year, after 31 years in the IT industry and aged 48, Sandy Crampton found herself without a job.

After 17 years in secretarial and administrative roles with the same organisation, June Smith (not her real name) landed in the same position, but aged 56.

Jerual Roa, 42, also occupies the ranks of the mature unemployed according to Judy McGregor and Lance Gray, who took 40 as a starting point for their 2001 study on mature job seekers. However, unlike the two women, he had some say in his job status, having immigrated with his family in January in search of a better life.

Their vastly different experiences show the foolishness of treating mature workers as a homogenous group of inflexible oldies, stuck in their ways, unwilling to train and learn or adapt to changing business needs.

Crampton says that after so long in the industry, her initial reaction when her 4 1/2-year contract suddenly ended was to take some time off and relax. But then she worried that she might miss the ideal opportunity, and so started looking seriously.

"I also realised that my age would go against me in the future, that my skills were outdated and that I needed to get into permanent work to update my skills."

Crampton thought it might take three months to find another job. Actually, it took six and she had to change industries and drop her income - putting paid to the myths that mature workers are inflexible, unwilling to learn new skills and expect too much money.

"I'm now earning 15 per cent less than I was earning in 1991," she says.

She believes her age did make it difficult find work, but the out-of-date skills limited her just as much.

Roa's experience also shows how adaptable mature job seekers can be and how willing they are to update their skills if needs be.

An experienced communications and PR manager from the Philippines, he's applied for about 50 jobs and taken short-term work as a hotel receptionist and a copy-writer since arriving in New Zealand.

He has completed a qualification in teaching English as a second language and is now on a 12-week course to update his computer skills.

"Studying is really retooling yourself, updating your skills," he says. "In computing, the visual media, telecoms, technology becomes obsolete in a matter of months or years. You have to keep up."

Roa's optimisitic about his chances and doesn't believe his age is holding him back.

And although some studies suggest mature unemployed aren't as good as their younger counterparts at using their networks when job hunting, he's actively trying to build his.

Employers should not make assumptions about an applicant's willingness to adapt simply because of their age, says Roa.

"There can be no generalisations. It depends on the

Employers should not make assumptions about an applicant's willingness to adapt simply because of their age, says Roa.

"There can be no generalisations. It depends on the person."

Smith has had to do a lot of adapting since her job of 10 years was "disestablished" in July last year. She knew changes were occuring and had asked if her job would be affected because she wanted to move house and take out a small mortgage.

On the strength of a more than satisfactory performance appraisal and verbal assurances her job was safe, she went ahead with her plans - then lost her job anyway.

In the past 12 months Smith has lost count of the number of jobs she's rung up about but admits she has applied for few because initial responses were so negative - even though she has been prepared to consider jobs paying half her previous salary. Instead, she's made do on 25-30 hours of temp work a week, which she has been able to find for only about nine months.

Finances are, she admits, pretty tight. She used her redundancy pay to decrease her mortgage, the money she put aside for furnishing her new home has all gone to pay bills and she lives from pay packet to pay packet.

She's been with her current employers since the beginning of the year - as one short-term assignment ended another one has always seemed to come up - but she knows it could end at a moment's notice.

Smith's mortgage has about five years to run and so far she's managed to "keep it ticking along".

But saving for her retirement is out of the question. "There's no money for planning. I just pay the bills as they come in."