Community Blog: Empirical Consultants

Many of the clients I work with have experienced the problems that many boomers experience as they seek re-employment.  Many boomers have attempted transitioning their skills and experiences into industries outside of their core experience and have learned a difficult lesson.  Transitioning skills into new industries is one of the most difficult methods of job searching. Your skill set may be transitional however; your specific job experience may be a limiting factor in your choices, especially within the published market.  As you build your résumé and search strategy, hopefully your résumé shows a large number of successes within your field and job industry, this is good, but what about transitioning into a new industry?  

Many displaced boomers are being told that career transition is the answer to their unemployment problems. And it can be, if they learn the dynamics of the current job market and how they should approach the career transition solution.  Let us look at a typical example of a displaced Marketing VP other positions of course can apply. 

Our VP has a 20-year career with an office technology company and has launched many successful campaigns bringing products to market. The question; can this VP of Marketing be successful in marketing medical software?  Our VP of Marketing has mastered the science and rules of marketing and has the skills to bring virtually any product or service to market.  The skill set is transferable but what about the experience?  As our VP of marketing will discover while looking for a job, especially on the Internet, they have the skills but not the experience so they hit a major barrier.  This is where frustration results, “I can do the job with my eyes closed but I don’t have the experience.”(Almost sounds like the recent grad)  Most résumés will not get past the computer, or résumé screener, especially with the Internet positions.

# Does our boomer really need the industry experience to be successful as a VP of Marketing in a software company?
# How do you get the necessary experience? 
# How does the transitioning boomer get around that barrier? 

The answer to question one is determined by the market (the hiring companies) especially on published positions.  If you read “medical software marketing experience required” in the posting and you do not have the specific experience do not even apply for the job.  In general, the transitioning baby boomer will have little success finding a job in the published market because they are competing against those with skills and industry experience.

Can our VP of Marketing get necessary industry experience and become competitive in this job market?   Probably not at the VP level, one option might be to take a lower level marketing position in that industry to gain that experience.  Of course that opens a completely new problem set; you are now overqualified and will run into the “you are too qualified for this position” rejections.

Will attending an industry related certification program give you industry experience?  No, experience is just that, experience.  Obtaining industry related certifications will add value to your résumé and show that you are interested in the industry but never be a substitute for industry experience.  This is the biggest problem with the baby boomer and the published market, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, occasionally it might work but it is never a good fit.  As a baby boomer, you must develop a job search strategy that will get you in front of people who appreciate your skill set and accomplishments and that understand that industry experience, for the most part is overrated.

Tactics and strategies exist that can be employed by the transitioning boomer to make this process happen sooner rather than later.  The secret is lower your expectations of the published market if you are conducting a career transition search.  It takes a focused approach to be successful in your search.  The Internet and job boards will not be helpful to these individuals because they are competing with those who have current experience in that arena.  Getting in front of the right people and presenting yourself as the best solution for a problem a key decision maker is having is what networking is all about.  Future blogs will discuss why a baby boomer needs to have a very structured and executable networking strategy to be successful in using a career transition strategy.