I watched this past Monday’s Tory Johnson story on Good Morning America (GMA) and saw them provide great tips for older job hunters.  She recommends keeping a positive attitude and outlook when older workers face stumbling blocks specific to their age group.  Age discrimination is definitely NOT fair, but letting it shake you or getting you down makes things worse. Seeing the glass as half full versus half empty can help you take on this challenge better and even turn it into a plus. 

My experience hiring older and over qualified candidates has been 100% positive.  Older people have brought me the skills I needed and the addition of some soft skills that helped me as a manager deal with personal or team issues (among other things.)  The additional maturity I’ve gotten from these works is welcomed benefit.  The want for supposedly more driven workers by employers in Tory Johnson’s story versus older experience folks is just plain short sighted.  What a myopic and ridiculous approach to hiring!

I recommend a book called “Now, Discover Your Strengths” that talks about and provides assessments for identifying the benefits of a diverse team.  Older workers introduce additional diversity that complement the thinking presented by this book. This makes for a better, stronger team.  You can find more information on this topics in my Now, Discover Your Strengths book review.

Editor’s Note: Tory authored a book called Fired to Hired: Bouncing Back from Job Loss to Get to Work Right Now in August 2009. This was published after the writing of this post.

I haven’t read the book, but the ten Amazon.com customer book reviews all rated it at 5 out of 5 stars. It provides practical advice to guide your job hunt.

Hope this helps.