To think job market for those 55 and over is dire

[Bettyfordtoday]

At 55, and recently made redundant from a highly paid corporate role I am struggling to get another role or even an interview.

I'm wondering what others do at this age point, too young to retire but seemingly too old to interview ?

Have a mortgage etc to pay and don't want to get in debt , redundancy pay will last if I am careful to the end of the year at most

YABU. The job market is absolutely shit for everyone.

Everyone is replying about how to de-age the CV, but surely this only works for initial stages of recruitment? The fact of the matter is lots of employers are agist. They don't want to pay more for your experience and they fear your ability to work will be impaired by health conditions (20% of people over 55 have some chronic illness) or caring responsibilities for frail parents.

Yes it does. A good CV will have your core skills, your core achievements, and a selected list of places you did them. It does not need to have a list of worked here from this date to that date.

Nothing worse than that latter type CV.

Civil service seems to be worth a look.

A lot of 50+ teachers are being made redundant (too expensive) and a lot seem to move into the CS.

This is really frustrating but true.

I'm 51. No health issues, no children at home and no parents.

I'm the most reliable I've ever been!

Yup you can employ people with similar/greater skill levels for less money who are younger. My old company has been through another round of redundancies (FTSE 100, halving in size) and there was a lady in my old team let go. I think of her quite often. She was lovely, early 60s, with a husband who had never really worked so she had a lot on her shoulders. Honestly she wasn't that good but she worked very hard and due to being in the company for decades was on a far higher salary than her banding or what she can expect externally. It's a cruel market, made much worse by this government.

No dob on cv. Potted brief history of education etc at end. Most first interviews are teams etc so a usual everyday blurring can help. The job market is awful for everyone but just a little consciousness of bias can help you plan around it. It shouldn’t be necessary but play the game.

We've just been through four rounds of redundancies (corporate) including me. I'm 40. Anyone over 40 is really struggling. I can't even imagine how it feels at 55.

Our entire marketing and digital team were made redundant in favour of AI! They're struggling the most and weirdly the advice for older people tends to be "gain some digital marketing skills" - yes maybe this worked in 2021 but not in 2026. That ship has sailed

Many corporate companies make you fill out a form when applying. They say it's for diversity and inclusion - but they ask for your DOB. I think this is suss

Best wishes to all who are unemployed or facing redundancy 💐 it's horrible

(my friend is a TA and she has just been made redundant. Yesterday she found out)

For over 55’s in particular getting another job is very hard. There will always be exceptions. But in general ; not valued, not wanted.

The sad thing is the government (can't remember who or when!) went on about "economic inactivity" of people aged 50+

Well, yes. So why not DO something? Not sure what they could do really.

Seems to be so common but barely discussed!

I'm a similar age and seniority. I've been out of work about 10 months now and after a fruitless search so far I'm becoming inclined to call it a day and retire earlier than I intended with a more modest lifestyle than planned.

I'd recruited into my team quite recently. Sometimes I put adverts in LinkedIn and Indeed myself, but the response was overwhelming. I think that explains a lot of the problem. It took me ages to wade through the many irrelevant and pointless applications to get to a shortlist. It's simply too easy to apply. More often I'd have to delegate the initial shortlisting to a specialist colleague or let an agency advertise and present close match candidates. With that comes the second problem; the person, agency or software delegated to sift will have their own biases and also a lack of creative thought such that interesting though perhaps imperfect matches will be discarded. This person isn't likely to feel much empathy for the applicants. The third problem is that the first batch, of perhaps 100 applications, will be harvested from the advert. The advert will be left running and further applicants will only be considered if the first batch didn't produce enough people to progress with. Therefore there are many adverts left running that nobody looks at responses for.

I finished school 26 years ago and, of course, I don't put it on my CV. Who cares about my GCSE and A levels at this point? I put my degrees which don't give away much as I went to uni in my late 30s.

The job market is just dire. I’m 40 and I only seem to be managing to stay employed with a FTC that keeps getting renewed. I can imagine how hard it must be for the over 55 demographic with all the ageism out there. It’s a numbers game to a degree just keep applying for anything you’re prepared to do

It's dire for everyone, but the under 25s and over 50s have it the worst.

Either too experienced or not enough experience.

Although I think some employers are cynical about older people. They know that many of them will be sorted financially so they just can't exploit them like they can younger staff, because they'll just say up yours and leave. Younger people with mortgages and young children can't and have to put up with bad treatment.

Same.
Im 55. Kids are grown up, I’m fit as I’ve ever been, bags of experience, up for trying new stuff. I’m not ambitious for senior leadership, so I won’t be angling for promotion or leaving in a year.
give me interesting work, a decent pension, private medical insurance and hybrid working and I’ll be there for another 10 years.

That was Jeremy Hunt. He didn't do anything and neither has this government.

Although I am not sure what you can do about ageism. It's difficult to prove you were discriminated against for any protected characteristic but age is probably the most difficult.

I was last properly in the job market at 42, and the young perky chap at the agency I signed up with made me dumb down my admittedly patchy CV to virtually nothing experience wise because employers then were "threatened" by older candidates. Lots of doom and gloom about not fitting in with younger people because gaps in my CV for caring and child rearing meant I'd be lucky to get anything full time at NMW.

Did a couple of years in a call centre selling insurance on a warm calling basis which was "OK" but no scope for progression to underwriting, those opportunities went to younger people. Then the company restructured and it was last in, first out. Did some retail, then a couple of years admin at a small construction firm, before DPs mother developed dementia, came to live with us and being the lower earner I became her 24 hour carer. In order to keep me in some kind of work, we opened a small shop, which she came with me to until after about two years, when we couldn't keep her safe any more and she went into a home.

Was doing ok, then Covid hit, we relocated to smaller cheaper premises after lockdown. A month after our re-opening, DP died suddenly. Kept things limping along for a further two years accruing debt along the way then my DF and SM went into separate health crises and all sorts of clusterfuck went on with that.

DF died last year and I'm NC with evil SM - her choice - and I'm just peering out of my foxhole and thinking about WTH I'm supposed to do now.

Which is why I opened this thread. Which mainly confirms the feeling I've had for a while - essentially - I am obsolete 😂

@MistressoftheDarkSide Christ on a bike. I can really relate to your post!!

@igelkott2026 of course it was Jeremy! It seems obvious now 🤣

I despair 💐💐💐

I wouldn't employ an older applicant because in my experience they think they know more than you, have no ambition, want an easy life and coast to retirement. Not fair on the rest of the team who have to pick up their slack.

do you think you might be generalising a bit? I work with several women and men in their 50s who do not fit this profile at all.

Nice bit of ragebait there. The algorithms love a bun fight. You'll be older too one day. If you aren't a bot.

I'm 48 and haven't worked for 15 years due to very severe chronic migraines, having as many as 25 migraine days, sometimes more a month. After 20 years of trying everything to get them under control I finally have a treatment protocol that seems to be helping a lot. I want to return to work, I left a good career in Media but nobody seems to be interested in me for anything at all even Morrisons rejected me.. I do have skills I could go freelance with but its very difficult to start from scratch at this point.

Civil service are making cuts too. I know a couple of people who have been made redundant recently

I’d leave them off, just list A levels and that I have Maths and English at ‘GCSE/O Level’ (which is all they are interested in), and then degree stuff and work experience?