One of this season's episodes of "Desperate Housewives" had Lynette Schiavo, played by Felicity Huffman, going for a job interview after six or seven years of being out of the ad business.
While waiting in the lobby, she phones to see if there have been any callbacks on the other six interviews she's already had. None.
Then, as she sits, she overhears two young women around 30 talking about how old they're getting.
"In this business, after 35, they take you out and they shoot you in the face," says one. As Huffman, whose character is 43, passes them on her way into the interview, she tells them, "Do me a favor, if you hear a gunshot, tell my four kids I love them."
It sort of hit home.
At 53 and in the job market for the first time in 17 years, it had never occurred to me that age could be an issue until I was at an interview a few months ago.
Two of the three interviewers were around 30. When one of the younger ones asked me if I really felt I could transition back into public relations after 16 years in the newspaper business, I felt her doubt was about something more -- like, was I capable of adapting after all this time, at my age?
It was the same for Huffman's character, who said later in the episode, "The bottom line is no one wants to hire someone who could have made out with their dad on prom night."
When I ran that idea by an executive search professional here in Traverse City, though, he didn't see it that way. He suggested instead that people of any age need to get with the program. It's not about how old you are, he said, but about being current.
"People would not wear the same tux or wedding dress as they did at prom (ages ago) or even a social function from five years ago," he said. "Styles change, and people change with those styles."
Social media is exploding and if you aren't part of it, he said, you could be left behind -- especially if you are in a field where it's becoming a key communications tool.
I was thinking that being my age doesn't mean I can't catch up and on to things I never had to learn in my old job. What he's saying is don't tell them you'll catch up, just do it. Take a class. Volunteer to get hands-on experience. Now. While you're job hunting.
So get a Twitter account. Join Facebook. Even if it means, as the search professional said it did for him, having to ask your high school senior to show you how.
Reach Kathy Gibbons at gibbonskath@yahoo.com or on the Internet at www.whateverittakesonline.net.
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