What happens after your career is over?
It might be just the beginning of how you change the world.
Finding a new job is never easy, but if you are a woman over 60, the news is particularly grim.
In a survey of 1,000 hiring managers, the website resumebuilder.com reports that 42 percent consider age when they are sifting through resumes, and not in a good way. Slightly more than a third of those surveyed “expressed concerns about hiring candidates over the age of 60,” because they’re worried they’ll retire quickly, have health issues, lack experience with technology or work too slowly or with a “fixed mindset.”
In another comprehensive study by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, research underlines statistical evidence of age discrimination in hiring and that older applicants, those between 64 and 66, experience age discrimination more than slightly younger applicants, those who are 49-51.
That study also found that women, especially older women, experience more age discrimination than men do. While the study’s authors didn’t ask why older women experience the worst degree of age discrimination, it may be because “physical appearance is evaluated more harshly for women than for men.”
Ouch.
Mary Harvey Gurley knows all about the backstories those study results don’t mention.
She was laid off — actually, she took a buyout, but she knew the end was coming — five years ago, after a decades-long career at a major corporation. She’d built great relationships throughout the company, including with the founder. She thought she’d done important, mission-aligned work all those years.
In the end, though, she realized that she was being eased out because of her age. It was a crushing blow, even with a generous buyout package.
She knew she wasn’t ready to spend her days watching TV and doing crossword puzzles. “I’m happier working,” she said. “It’s just the way I’m wired.”
But she also knew her days working for a corporation were over. “I knew I never wanted to go back into that world. But it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do.”
Eventually, Mary Harvey, now 65, realized that her secret sauce, what she knew the most about, was reinventing herself, because she had done it so many times, long before her corporate life ended.
“I walked in one night and found my husband dead,” she said; her husband was the respected Memphis political advisor Paul Gurley, who died in 2001. “I had to totally reinvent myself then. It was huge. Then I lost 200 pounds, which was another huge reinvention.” After that, she went to rehab and has been sober 11 years.
She’s been busy reinventing herself since she left her corporate job, too, following her many interests, including writing, research, photography, travel, cooking, gardening — she has even done videos on Tik Tok that got her noticed by a casting company because of one of her favorite hashtags, #grayhair.
The takeaway: Mary Harvey has learned that it’s possible to change who you are, and has realized she wants to share what she knows with other women in her situation.
“I want to help women move forward in last third of their lives,” she said. “It’s a time to find what truly makes you happy and brings you joy.”
To that end, she has launched maryharveygurley.com and a written a series of LinkedIn articles that include information about what to do if you get laid off as well as reflections on ageism and how corporations discriminate against older workers, especially women.
She has also realized that she is the leading edge of a generation that could change the meaning of retirement — and old age — forever, especially for women.
“We are a group in a time frame that we haven’t seen before,” she said. “We are ending our careers with another 15 or 20 years before we are quote elderly unquote. For the first time in our lives, we can do what we want to do however we want to do it.
“My ultimate goal is helping women find where they are right now and reinvent themselves for the future. Because I believe that in those 15 or 20 years, these women can change the world. We can offer new ideas, new programs, volunteer, build businesses. There are huge things that this group, mobilized, could achieve for the planet.”
Her energy and restless, inquiring curiosity are contagious — and hopeful, especially in the face of a corporate world that clearly hasn’t figured out how to hire, retain or support women in the later stages of their careers.
“Just because you got canned, it doesn’t define who you are,” she said. “You’ve got an opportunity to define what you want and build an infrastructure for how to do that.
“Let’s report back! This is going to be a group that does great things.”
What have you learned about how to design the later stages of your career? Are there any companies that are doing it right for experienced women who don’t want to stop working? Let’s report back: It’s time to build some momentum for the change we want to see.
Getting “eased out” was a gift. It allowed me the time and space of mind to think about what I really wanted from the third phase of my life. Thanks for this Leanne!
What happens then is freedom, and the challenge to reconnect with our passions (or create new ones). I left my biotech career in my early sixties - I'd been writing FDA submissions and managing other writers for decades - to write exactly what I feel like. Now editing my fifth book, "Write & Sell a Well-Seasoned Romance," a guide to writing Romance novels with older protagonists. Let's rewrite the narrative about older women, one love story at a time.