Obama, McCain, Age Discrimination, the Job Search, and Karen P. Katz

What do all these things have in common?  The JibberJobber radio show!  Today I spoke with Karen P. Katz, owner of Career Acceleration and blogger who has some terrific thoughts on the job interview, and what we can learn from Obama and McCain in the ultimate job interview.

Karen P. Katz
Karen P. Katz

We started talking about why Obama has the position he has, even though he doesn’t have the credentials McCain has.  I’m not interested in a political discussion, so don’t go there, but think about it… doesn’t it seem that McCain has a lot of the “right things,” according to what a job description of the President of the United States (POTUS) would contain?

As job seekers, do we sometimes look at a job description and think it’s unatttainable, even though we might have done the same stuff somewhere else?  Yup, you guessed it, transferrable skills.  Karen talked a lot about transferrable skills on this one-hour job search radio show.

The Recruiting Animal
The Recruiting Animal

We got onto a very interesting point about age discrimination, and how to deal with age discrimination in a job search.  It was cool to have the Recruiting Animal on the show, as he provided a recruiter’s point of view.  What does an older job search candidate do if faced with discrimination in the interview?  We talked about that at length, and some great ideas where thrown around.

That’s all I’m going to tell you – you can listen to the hour long show here 🙂

4 thoughts on “Obama, McCain, Age Discrimination, the Job Search, and Karen P. Katz”

  1. It was a lot of fun to do this program with you and “the Recruiting Animal” from Canada! Thank you for the opportunity to share some of my thinking about two of my favorite topics: politics and careers. Hope we have started a lively discussion among the career-politicos… For example, was I too harsh or wrong about recently-minted MBA graduates?

  2. I had a great time 🙂 The Animal always adds, and it’s good to have him call in. I learned quite a bit and hope that listeners can pull out pearls of wisdom that they have been looking for – thanks Karen!

  3. Hmmm…

    Couple of things I always advise people to do is to examine the job description and if you can handle 50-60% of the job at the time you apply, then go ahead and apply. In additition to having the raw technical skills on paper, you also have to sell some other capabilities:

    – the ability to network. In otherwise get credible outsiders on your side.
    – the ability to inspire and share a vision of where the company or organization could go
    – the ability to transfer skills
    – the ability to think strategically to achieve outcomes.

    I think that is why job descriptions get rewritten and updated all the time.

    Having said that, this election is breaking all kinds of barriers which is awesome. I wrote about seniors who are working and contributing well beyond what was considered the norm. Average Age of Congress is 61.8 Years.

  4. While age discrimination is illegal, it absolutely does exist. It’s best to limit the number of “dates” on your resume and make sure the resume format that you use is the latest and greatest. Also, don’t forget to tailor your resume. This could very well be the difference between making it past the slush pile or not.

    Resume to Referral
    Resume and Career Services
    https://www.resumebycprw.com

Comments are closed.