Being made redundant is never a fun story. When you are made redundant in your 50’s and that window of experimentation and hope feels drastically narrower, the game can quickly become one of blame and shame.
I felt humiliated. Worried. Ashamed.
Like many in my situation I tried to put on a brave face, go through all the motivational steps, feed with positivity and looked at the situation from the reinvention angle. But the harsh reality of ageism hit me like a boomerang.
The job market is built to make you believe that age trumps skills, and experience can hardly open any door these days.
But as it happens in life, there are those moments when belief, trust and learnings come from the most unexpected vehicles. Like F1: The Movie.
And putting aside that a man in his 60s can be cast as a racing driver, while women in their 60s are offered roles built around being menopausal, old, grumpy or someone’s grandmother, the film reminded me of something important.
Experience matters.
And as in the movie, experience is not the opposite of talent, it is part of the talent.
Experience does not have to compete with youth, it should complement it. Because experience brings something that youngsters are still developing: judgement. Pattern recognition. Resilience. Understanding the risk. The memory of having seen the problem in a different form before.
Many of us over 50, when we are made redundant start believing that we need to compete with the younger generation and we are lacking the tools, that age is more important than skills, that reinvention at this stage is for daydreamers, that certain roles have simply past our expiry date.
These beliefs are fueled by storied from individuals in similar situations. the unpredictability and lack of transparency of the job market, the endless grape vines advise about the “right” CVs, and the “right” Linkedin profile, and the “right” age to make changes.
And, perhaps most powerfully, they are fueled by our own limited perceptions of ourselves.
We look at our CV and we see the job title, the most recent experience, the last industry we worked in, the gaps, the things we don’t have.
We see what is missing. And we fail to see what has been accumulated
Because by 50, most of us have accumulated an extraordinary amount of something that rarely fits neatly in a CV: experience.
Not just years. Experience in making difficult decisions, sometimes with incomplete information. In dealing with crisis. In navigating change. In building relationships. In making mistakes and recover after them.
And these are not obsolete skills.
In fact, in this world that is dominated by constant change, uncertainty, increasingly sophisticated technology, there may be more value in these skills than we can imagine.
The challenge after redundancy is not complete reinvention, it is translation.
So perhaps if you are over 50 and have recently been made redundant, start by asking “What have I learned that someone else hasn’t?”, instead of “How do I become someone else?”
Because redundancy may have taken your job title, your routine, your confidence, but it can’t touch your experience.
You are not too old. Your experience does not have an expiry date. And companies that are smart enough to blend experience with youth will have a competitive advantage.
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