Are you an older person who is looking for work, or just a career change? Check out these tips to highlight your transferable skills.
The Importance of Highlighting Your Transferable Skillset
The age profile of the workforce is changing, being an ‘older worker’ is no longer uncommon. This has triggered an increasing awareness of the benefits of hiring older workers from employers across the UK.
However, age discrimination remains a form of unfair discrimination that employees in the UK report the most, particularly against older workers. In this, some employers do not understand how your skills will transfer to their workplace. In your application, CV and interview, you need to be clear as possible on this is the case.
Qualifications are a proxy for skills and have increased in prominence over the years. An inexperienced employer will misread a lack of qualifications for a lack of skills. You need to remind them that that is not so.
Read our top tips on getting that message across to your new employer.
Training
Any areas where you need to be able to apply your skills through a new medium, employers are often apprehensive to hire an older worker.
However, if you can demonstrate an openness to train on new technology they will have very little to worry about. If you have examples of proactiveness to learn new technology, they will be significantly less apprehensive about hiring you.
With skills gaps opening up across the board, explaining that you are willing to take on general skills training will make you the ideal candidate. Not only will you plug the skills gap in the company, but will also bring a wealth of experience, knowledge and reliability that younger staff lack.
Experience
The greatest asset in your arsenal is your wealth of experience. Unlike a younger employee, you can draw on a host of examples where you have had to deal with uncertain situations and enormous challenges.
Discussing how you learnt from them through hard work and perseverance will remind your employer the value in employing older workers. Learning how to work hard takes time, which you have more than the other candidates.
Knowledge
Going through multiple generations of economic change gives you a greater perspective about processes that work and products that customers will respond to. For an economy with a deficit of leaders, demonstrate why your experience can only help the company overcome their competitors.
Despite this, you need to demonstrate an openness to change as there is a stigmatisation that older workers will resist new technology. As long as you profess that you will offer your perspective but fully support the necessary changes, employing you will be a no-brainer.
Reliability
In these uncertain times, having employees who the company can rely on is essential. Having gone through years of work, you know what it takes to get a job done.
Furthermore, you can express that you have no interest in moving on to another job. A younger person will often take significant development and then move on. For you, you can state that you want the job for the long-term commitment.
With recruitment being one of the most significant burdens for UK companies, they can rest easy knowing they have hired you for the long run.