Latest / Prosper With Wayne / Tired of Applying for Jobs? The 5 Move Reset for Anyone Over 45
Transcript
- Wayne Sutton: You've sent the applications, you've rewritten the resume at 11 o'clock at night, you've refreshed your inbox so many times you can do it in your sleep. And what came back was silence, or one of those automated emails that starts with the word unfortunately. If that's where you are right now, let me say something up front. Nothing's wrong with you, but something might be wrong with the method. in this episode, I'm gonna give you a five move reset for job search that is stalled, And it's especially for anyone over 45. It feels like the whole process wasn't built with them in mind. No hype, no promise that you're gonna land a job in 30 days, just a practical way to take back your time, your money, and your peace of mind. I'm Wayne Sutton. This is Prosper with Wayne, where we talk about money, health, and life in general. So stay with me. Now, before we start, this is general education, not financial, legal, or career counseling advice. When it comes to retirement accounts, benefits, taxes. Talk to a professional about your own situation. I'll remind you when we get there. But let's start with why searches stall. Because if you can name the problem, you can fix it. In my experience, most stalled searches come down to three things, and none of them are you're not good enough. Number one, your efforts going to the wrong place. A lot of people spend most of their hours sending applications into a pile where many people are competing for the same posting and little time talking to actual human beings. It feels productive because you're busy, but busy is not the same as moving forward. Number two, Your experience isn't translated. You know what you've done for 20 or 30 years. The person reading your resume for 10 seconds, they don't. So if they can't quickly see what problem you solve, you get passed over, and that has nothing to do with your worth. And number three is pressure. When your savings are shrinking and every week feels like it's costing you, you start searching from fear. You chase anything, you undersell yourself, and people can feel that. so the five moves we're going to walk through answer those problems. Here they are in order. Number one, audit your search. Number two, shift applications from conversation. Number three, translate your experience into the problem you solve. four, build a runway so desperation doesn't set your price. Five, protect your energy. Let's go. Move one. Audit your search. The first move is the simplest and one most people jump over. Find out where your time's actually going. So for the next two weeks, keep a short log, four lines. How many hours did I spend on my search this week? How many applications did I send? How many real conversations did I have, meaning back and forth with a human, by phone, video, message, or in person, and how many interviews did I get? That's it. And a notepad is fine. If you listen to my episode on the five anchors, this is a perfect thing to attach to you Sunday morning check-in. Ten minutes not to judge yourself, just to see. Then at the end of two weeks, look at the log and ask one question. Where did my conversations and interviews actually come from? Was it applications, a former coworker, somebody that knew somebody, somebody who saw something you posted? I'm not going to tell you what your numbers will say, they're yours, but whatever they say. That's where your next hour should go. If the applications are producing interviews for you, keep doing them and do them well. If they aren't, you just found something that you couldn't see when you were busy. One more thing about this: put a start time and stop time on your search. Treat it like a job. Say from 9 to noon, and then you're done. A search with no edges eats your whole life and will leave you exhausted by Wednesday. We'll come back to that more in move five. Move two, shift from applications to conversations. See, an application is a conversation with a system. All right. A person is a conversation with a person, and people hire people. All right. So I want you to start setting simple weekly targets, not applications, but conversations. Start with five a week. Five real conversations with people who know you or someone who knows you. Who are these five people? Coworkers. Former coworkers, former bosses, people you manage, vendors and customers you work with, friends from church, friends from your community, from your kids' sports team. Neighbors, anyone who has seen how you work or works at a place you'd like to work. Now a lot of people hear this and they freeze because it feels like begging. So let me change how you think about it. You're not asking for a job, you're asking for perspective. People love to give you their perspective, their opinion. So here's a message you can use and of course make it sound like you. Hey, Dana, it's been a while. I'm looking at my next step in, and this is where you went your field. And I've always respected how, something specific and true about them. Would you have 15 minutes for a quick call? I'm not asking you for a job, just your perspective on where things are headed. All right. Let me give you a real life example on this. Hey Dana, it's been a while. I'm looking at my next step in fractional sales management. I've respected how you've run your sales team over the years. Would you have 15 minutes for a quick chat? I'm not looking for a job, just your perspective on where things are headed. Okay? That's it. Short, specific, no pressure. Then on the call, I'm I ask a couple questions. What's changing in your world right now? Where do you see the need for people like me as a fractional sales manager? And is there anyone else you'd suggest I talk to? That third question is where doors open. Every call should end with a name. And then of course, send a thank you. Same day, two sentences. Best way to be remembered and cost you nothing. Now, let me say this also. Don't ask for a favor on the first message to someone you haven't talked to in years. Reconnect, build a relationship, let it breathe. It's not a numbers game where you blast through fifty people. Five thoughtful messages, beat fifty, copy and paste one. And honor those relationships. I want you to grab hold of this again. Honor those relationships. Because even if that relationship lands you into a career, That job may not last forever. So again, going back, having those relationships, I have worked with several companies over the last few years as fractional sales management. And in those, every one of those came from a relationship that I built. None of them actually came from. Posting, hey, I'm a fractional sales manager. So I want you to grab a hold of that. Relationships matter. Honor those relationships. Move number three, translate your experience. Remember, okay, remember problem two where your experience isn't translated? Well, let's fix it. Get a sheet of paper and make three columns. In the first column, write out a problem you solved. In the second, how you solved it. And third, what happened because of it. Now, obviously, just write out what's true. If you can't remember an exact number, don't make up one. Describe the scope of it instead. How big was the team? How long did it take? How many customers or locations were you responsible for Honest and specific beats impressive and fuzzy every time. And do that for six or eight different things. Look for patterns. What kind of problems keep showing up in your story? Maybe you're the one person who calms down a chaotic department. Maybe you're the one that trains new people. Maybe you're the one that catches mistakes before they cost money. Now turn that pattern into one sentence. I help who do what so that result. Something like I help small teams get organized and stay on schedule so projects finish without panic. I help sales teams get organized, become productive, and increase cash flow in each department. Something like that. This is who I am and this is what happens, okay? Yours will be different, but you get the idea. And that sentence goes at the top of your resume, at the top of your online profile, and in your mouth when someone says, What do you do? And let's get real about something. When you're over 45 and in a job search, some employers, whether they say it or not, they carry a bias about age. All right. You can't control that. You can control how clearly your value shows up and where you choose to spend your effort. Look for places that value what you bring. Judgment, reliability, the ability to train others, the ability to stay steady when things get hard. Those things are real. And one practical point, pick a current skill or tool in your field and refresh it. Not because you have to chase youth, but because it takes a question out of someone's mind. A recent course or certificate or simply being able to talk comfortably about the tools people use today shows you're still learning. Don't go overboard, just one thing. If you don't understand AI, it's time to learn. Move four build a runway. All right, move four - And this is the money move. Problem three was pressure. Pressure is mostly a math problem you haven't looked at. So let's look at this. This is general education. For your own numbers, talk to a qualified professional. But find your bare bones number. All right. Step one. Not your normal budget, your bare bones. Housing, utilities, grocery, transportation, insurance, minimum payments on your debts. Add it up. How much do you need to stay afloat each month? All right. Then step two, figure your runway. take the amount you have in savings, and divide it by that bare bones number. This is roughly how many months you can search without new income. Write it down, maybe bigger than you feared, and it might be smaller. Either way, a known number's easier to carry than an unknown one. Fear lives in fog. Step three, decide in advance what you'll accept. Before the pressure peaks, write a short rule for yourself. I'll hold out for a role that does these things until this date. after that date, I'll take a bridge job. Deciding in advance while you're calm protects you from deciding in panic. And that word bridge matters. A Bridge job, part-time work, contract work, seasonal work, consulting for past employers, not failure. It's a way to stretch your runway so you can keep searching from a steady place. Searching with some income coming in changes how you walk into a room. Step four, look at your support options. Check what you may be eligible for, like through state unemployment system if you've lost a job. Health coverage options if your employer coverage ended. And before you touch a retirement account to cover bills, talk to a professional first. Early withdrawals can come with taxes and penalties, and it's a decision you want to understand fully before you make it. Step five, if a bill's ever going to be a problem, call early. Don't wait until you missed it. People are usually more willing to work with you when you reach out before the problem, not after. And I'm going to recommend now go to Freer Finances. They're not supporting this channel, but I believe in them and what they do. Freerfinances.com, David Jones, speak to them if you need help in any of these areas. Move five, protect your energy. Move five, and honestly, is the one that holds all the other ones together. A long job search wears on your body and your mind. You sleep worse, you second guess everything, you start to feel like your value as a person is tied to what a stranger decides about your resume. And it isn't. You're more than a job title. So treat your energy as part of the plan. A few simple things. Keep your edges. We talked about the start time and stop time. When you're done for the day, be done. Close the laptop, go for a walk. I've talked on this podcast how simple walking helps your body and your head. And a job search is exactly the season to use it. Protect your sleep. A tired mind makes worse decisions and writes worse messages. And stay around people. Isolation's a quiet danger during a search. Have lunch with a friend, go to the church, gym, group where nobody asks what you do. And celebrate small wins, a conversation you didn't want to start, a message you sent, a call you made, those count. That's the real work. So let's make this simple. I'm gonna give you seven days here. Number one, all right, we must have a plan because if you don't, it's just a nice idea. Day one, write out your bare bones number and your runway. Okay. How much does it cost to live every month? All right, the goalpost, all right. And then how much do you have? How long can you go before that's depleted? That should take you about 10 minutes. Day two, start your four-line log: hours, applications, conversations, interviews. Day three, write your one sentence, I help. Okay, your I help statement. Day four, send your first two reconnect messages. Day five, send three more and block your search hours on the calendar with a start time and a stop time. Day six, take a long walk and do something that nothing to do with work. Day seven, do your 10 minute check-in. Look at the log. What work, what didn't, and adjust. That's your first week. We're gonna do this again until you actually get the role that you're looking for. Right, it's not a perfect week, but it's a started week. And of course, if you're today doing resumes, you're sending out your resumes, et cetera, you need to make sure that it's ATS formatted. That's applicant tracking system. If you want to more on that, just Google it. Your LinkedIn profile, You need to make sure it's up to date and displays who you are and what you have to offer. All right, five moves. Audit your search so you know where your efforts going. Shift from applications to conversations, experience into the problem you solve, a runway that desperation doesn't set your price. Protect your energy because you're a whole person, not just a candidate. And a stalled search doesn't mean the end of your story. Means it's time to change the method. And if this helps, share it with one person who's in a job search right now. It could be the nudge they need. And I'd love to hear from you which five moves are you starting this week? Put it in comments. I read every single one. And let me say this as a little caveat. If you're looking to break into the financial field, okay, if you're looking to career pivot and going into finance and investment banking and so forth, I have a resource for you personally, and I would love to speak with you about it. So you can reach out to me and I'll get that information to you. Now, if you want more, find links and resources at prosperwithwayne.com And if you're new here, Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. I'm Wayne. Take care of yourself. Take care of the people around you. And I'll see you on the next video.