Advice for workers over 50 who are looking for new jobs

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Jill Angel thought she had it made. After a wide-ranging career that included teaching and broadcasting, she took early retirement in 2005 from the California Highway Patrol, where she'd risen over 23 years to assistant chief.

The plan was to stay home with her daughters, now 10 and 13. After a breakup, a house refinancing and a recession, she worries she'll never get out of debt. She's eager to find a job to supplement retirement income that amounts to half her full-time salary.

So far, no luck — and she thinks she knows why. "I'm old," said Angel, who's 52.

"I've had several really great careers, but you're just not marketable in your 50s. The people interviewing you make you feel like you have nothing to offer."

In this weird new world of recession-era unemployment, looking for work can come as a shock to people who entered the job market before some of the HR specialists interviewing them were born. But according to career experts, people over 50 just have to learn how to compete.

Out are Internet resume blasts. In is tailoring your resume to specific openings — and networking your way into new employment.

"Generally when somebody says, 'I'm overqualified,' my thing is, 'Did you target your resume to the job?'" said Diane Miller, president of Wilcox Miller & Nelson, a Sacramento, Calif., executive search firm.

"If you didn't sell what they're looking for, you didn't do a good job," Miller said.

With local unemployment running at 12 percent — and the national rate for people 55 and older doubling to 7 percent between December 2007 and June 2009 — competition is stiff.

But even before the recession, a quarter of full-time workers ages 51 to 55 went through layoffs or lost jobs because an employer went out of business, says the AARP.

"It's important to realize that the marketplace has changed," California AARP associate director Charee Gillins said. "And it's important to create a personal brand. You have unique talents that can benefit the employer."

If you're over 50 and out of work, Gillins suggests researching where hot jobs are and where your skills match.

"There are companies that value older workers and understand what they bring," she said. "Older workers possess a range of qualities that employers want."

The transition into new employment — perhaps a new career field — may be hard, but it's far from impossible, says Carissa Brehm, chairwoman of the California Career Development Association's Sacramento chapter.

"A lot of people feel they need to dumb their resume down," said Brehm, a career consultant. "I don't like that phrase."

"The hard part is knowing what job they're looking for and to think about transferable skills they can apply to all sorts of jobs."

Angel, who's lived in South Natomas, Calif., since 2001 and is PTA president at Two Rivers Elementary School, wanted to be a substitute teacher.

Then she discovered that her teaching credential had expired. And the Natomas Unified School District substitute teachers' pool, with more than 350 names, is closed to new applicants, said district spokeswoman Heidi Van Zant.

A former two-time California "Toughest Cop Alive" winner who once trained college athletes and law enforcement academy applicants, Angel says a local gym rejected her for work as a personal trainer.

"I'll never get my kids through college and climb out of house debt if I don't get a significant job," Angel added. "But every time I think I have it so hard, I look at other people. Everybody's going through their own version of this."