My mum cannot get a job

[SausageShop]

Mum is in her 50s, worked in retail since she was 18.

She's been in the same job now for around 25 years - a small family run shop who haven't treated her very well so she's desperate to get out of there.

Between us we must have applied for up to 40 retail jobs for her in the last few months and she can barely get an interview!

The hardest thing is that we just get a generic, mass "we've decided not to progress your application" email so there's no constructive feedback to work with.

We've tried all the big supermarkets, Indeed is about 5 pages worth of Aldi jobs but if you're not successful for one role (e.g. Store Assistant) you can't reapply for any other role at the same level (e.g. cleaner) for 6 months.

It's do disheartening and I really feel for her and worry constantly about what this is doing to her mental health. What can she do?

Her CV looks good (we've shown it to others for feedback) and she's clearly well experienced so what's going on??

Any advice?

Most supermarkets have an online test and if you don’t pass you won’t get any further so managers won’t see your application. I notice you say she’s tried Tesco, how far did you get? Did you have to provide right to work documents? Unfortunately in retail a CV isn’t usually looked at until you progress to the next stage after the online test.

Any that had an online test she's not got to the next stage after that (and we've done a few of them together and looked online for advice re: the type of answers they're looking for).

The type of job she works in is also physically demanding, on her feet for 10h, up at 4am to walk to work... she's not a frail old lady 😂 seems really unfair that they'd write her off due to her age!

It is tough at the moment so encourage her not to take it personally. I hope she can find somewhere she'll be happier.

I’d get someone else to look at her CV. It seems really bad luck not to have got anywhere after all those applications, there may well be something about the CV which is putting people off.

The jobs advertised are mostly not real. The majority of large employers post "ghost jobs" permanently. They are not real positions.

The gaslighting around this for people looking for work is really cruel. On here people will constantly do a google search and say look, there's hundreds of jobs here or there. But most of them are ghost jobs. People who have not looked for work since 2021-ish are completely unaware of how much and how quickly the market has changed.

Large employers have broken their recruitment systems with ATS, possibly as a defensive measure against AI applications? Who knows. But there's just no point applying to any company you have heard of these days. Go to small businesses, talk in person.

Don’t include the previous jobs. Don’t include when she did her secondary school. Remove everything that’s an age giveaway.

A CV only needs to go back 10 years. 25 years in one small place suggests she may not have current skills. It no longer represents an employable person.

How are her IT skills? Can she use HHDs? Does she have any recent quals that say she can learn?

These will all need addressing to make her viable against a 20, 30 or 40 something.

Not sure it's age, my teens (19 + 18) have had the same experience. Applied for dozens and dozens of jobs. I'd say they get an acknowledgement maybe 1 in 10 jobs.

If they are running it through something automated they might have it set to something like “check for multiple retail roles” to look for experience and it isn’t hitting that as it’s only one long term role. Is there a way she can split it it out? Even if you’re just re-dressing similar things under a slightly different title

The answers to all the big supermarket online tests used to be on a website called the student room. For what it’s worth most of us who hire in retail don’t agree with the tests, we’d rather the old days when you could call in and hand a CV in because good people miss out due to not passing the test.

Would she consider a job in a school kitchen? I work at an independent school and all our lunch time staff- the ladies that dish up the lunches- are over 50 and lovely with the children. It is usually 4 hours a day.

Yes, I agree. As mentioned above, my dd applied for lots of jobs and it got her nowhere even though she had the right skills. Her CV was fine. In the end she got lucky and found a job through informal means. Otherwise she would still be looking.

My theory is that for a lot of minimum wage retail/services type jobs companies are looking for the following:

• preferably young (20s is ideal)
• not over 50
• preferably some experience
• but not a young person with higher qualifications/overly good academic results, because they are likely to move on quickly

I know that with some supermarket jobs on Indeed it automatically closes when they've had only a handful of applicants. It's more about applying instantly, as soon as the job vacancy is on there. They don't want loads of applicants, they just want to select from the first few, usually.

We managed to find dd a retail job recently after months of trying. I'd recommend not using big search engines like Indeed. Think of all the shops you know and look on their website for vacancies. Some don't advertise.

This isn’t “possibly ageist”. It’s age discrimination and is illegal.

It really depends on who's hiring. My local Sainsbury's and M&S are full of retiree age people staffing the tills, let alone people in their 50s.

Some places prefer to hire people in their 50s because they're just as mobile, unlikely to be moving on to something else (retirement is still a good 15 years away for most if not more), have a lot of related experience, and are not going to be taking maternity leave.

Does she have extra responsibility in her current role? Sometimes an application can be too good.

If you want an admin assistant but someone tells you all about managing a team, it's not the right fit. If they just want an admin role then they should tell us about this side of their previous jobs or explain in some way in their covering letter why they want a change.

I work in the kind of organisation where people think they can get a foot in and work up but our department is totally flat in structure and this won't happen.

You could also try a skills based CV. So focus is less on 'I've been here 25 years' and listening what school you went to and more 'experienced retail worker', confident in cashing up, stock management/ rotation, customer service, using tills, up selling etc.

A lot of those places use AI to filter through CVs. If she's not even getting an interview then it's possible that no real person has actually read it. Try getting AI to rewrite her cv so that it will include the right key words for AI to then choose it to progress to the next stage.

My husband is 55 and works in digital marketing, including training and consultancy work. There is nothing on his CV that reveals his age, and he has had no trouble securing interviews. However, despite attending numerous interviews, some of which involved large tasks and presentations, he has consistently been unsuccessful. He has even paid for coaching sessions where his interviews were critiqued positively, but it's clear that ageism is now a significant issue he’s facing, which seems to be widespread in recruitment. That or these companies just wanted free consultancy.

Remove anything on the cv that show her age, change o levels to “exams passed” and knock ten years off her time at the shop.

Well if we're making assumptions and being ageist, I know who out of me as a 52 YO woman and my 19 YO nephew would cope better with that sort of job and it's not the 'fit youngster' who in reality never lifts anything heavier than a gaming controller, wouldn't know initiative if it jumped out in front of him and if he could be persuaded to move a single box, he'd need to sit down for a few hours afterwards to recover.

Whereas I could happily shift boxes all day long if needed to because I'm used to doing it, like being active and am perfectly happy to get on with the job that's required.

Just to be different what about an apprenticeship, they are not just for young ppl. I have numerous learners who are older. Currently there are opportunities in local libraries near us, pay is the living wage so just above minimum wage. Don't let her go into care work in residential homes it is back breaking.

Card Factory when I visit a few of them, have older staff.

OP, it's not your mum, who sounds great and how lovely of you to help her. There are very few jobs out there at the moment, relatively speaking, and huge numbers of people applying for each one. This is the problem - not your mum's CV etc. There are a few other threads about this at the moment. It's not restricted to retail, all sorts of other industries are experiencing the same.

I second having the CV checked with national career service. A friend’s DH really struggled to get interviews until he had his CV checked for the keywords.

Has your mum spoken to some of the assistants in the shops where she'd like to work - ask them how they got in? Sometimes they might be able to pass her onto someone more senior and then she'll be able to forward her CV to them direct. Good luck.