Laid Off Over 50? Finding a Corporate Job in a Whole New Hiring World

Last week, I got laid off. At 62 years old, I suddenly found myself back in the job market. Again. This is actually round two for me in the last few years, which is not exactly a skill I was hoping to perfect at this point in my career, but apparently life had other plans.

If you’re a woman over 50 who has had years of job security and suddenly finds yourself looking for work again, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that all those years of experience, leadership, accomplishments and relationships still matter. The bad news? Holy crap, the job-search world has changed. The way companies recruit, the technology they use, the number of applicants competing for some positions and the growing role of AI make this a very different experience than it may have been the last time you were looking.

I’ve spent more than twenty years in marketing leadership across demand generation, digital marketing and marketing operations, so my natural instinct is to approach this the same way I would any other business challenge. Figure out what changed. Understand the environment. Build a strategy. Test what works. Adjust what doesn’t.

Of course, I had to get through the other stuff first. There was shock, crying, anger and a healthy amount of WTF just happened? But once I got through that first wave, I realized something: I can’t control the fact that my position was eliminated. I can’t control how many people apply for a job, whether a hiring manager thinks 62 is too old, or whether a company decides it wants someone with a completely different background than mine. What I can control is what I do next.

So that’s what I’m doing. Working the problem.

One Resume Isn’t Going to Tell Every Version of Your Story

If you haven’t been in the job market for a while, one of the biggest changes may not be your resume itself, but how strategically you need to use it. I have a strong resume that represents my career, but I’m not assuming one version of it is going to be equally effective for every opportunity I pursue.

When you’ve been working for 25 or 30 years, the challenge isn’t finding enough experience to put on a resume. Good grief, we have plenty. The challenge is deciding which experience matters most for the job sitting in front of you.

I’ve led across demand generation, digital marketing and marketing operations, and those are related but very different stories. If I’m applying for a demand generation leadership role, I want those accomplishments to jump off the page. If I’m pursuing marketing operations, I want my experience with technology, process, data and operational transformation to be impossible to miss.

This is one place where I’m finding AI incredibly useful. I can take a job description and my master resume and use AI to help identify what the company appears to care about most, where my experience aligns, what terminology they’re using and which of my actual accomplishments deserve more prominence. What I’m not doing is asking AI to turn me into some mythical marketing unicorn with experience I don’t actually have. If I didn’t do it, it doesn’t go on my resume.

I’m also making sure my resume reflects the executive I am today. I want current technology, AI, measurable results and the problems I know how to solve now to be obvious. I’m 62. I’m not ashamed of that, and I’m certainly not trying to convince anyone I’m 42. But I also don’t need my resume to be a historical accounting of my entire adult life. I want the person reading it to think, “She can solve the problem we have.”

Same Trish. Same career. Different spotlight.

Apply for the Damn Jobs—Then Work the Hell Out of Your Network

Sometimes job-search advice gets so complicated that you’d think we’re launching a satellite instead of trying to get an interview. Optimize your LinkedIn. Navigate the ATS. Build your personal brand. Network. Find the hiring manager. Use AI. Send a follow-up. Stand on one foot and turn around three times.

Meanwhile, at some point, you still have to apply for the damn job.

I’m setting alerts, watching companies that interest me, talking to recruiters and applying for positions that look like a strong fit. What I’m not going to do is judge the success of my day by how many Apply buttons I managed to hit. Sending 40 applications might make me feel productive, but I’d rather identify strong opportunities, understand what those companies need, tailor my approach and then see whether I can find a human connection into the organization.

I’m also trying very hard not to reject myself before an employer gets the chance to consider me. Women can be particularly good at reading a job description with ten requirements, realizing we have eight of them and immediately focusing on the two we don’t. Meanwhile, somebody else is sitting there with six thinking, “Hell yeah, I can do that.”

If I believe I can do the job and bring value to the company, I’m applying. They can decide whether they want to interview me. I’m not doing their rejecting for them.

Then I’m working the hell out of my network, because this is one area where those of us over 50 have something we didn’t have earlier in our careers.

We know people. Lots and lots of people.

After decades in business, I have former bosses, employees, coworkers, agency partners, vendors, customers, recruiters and friends spread across companies and industries. Some I talk to regularly. Others I haven’t spoken to in years. But many of those people know how I work, what I can do and what kind of leader I am. That isn’t just a nice collection of LinkedIn connections. That’s an asset.

If I see a position I’m interested in, I’m looking to see who I know at the company. If I don’t know anyone directly, I’m looking at who might know someone. I’m asking for introductions, reconnecting with former coworkers, talking to recruiters and being very specific about what I’m looking for: senior marketing leadership opportunities across demand generation, digital marketing and marketing operations.

And I’m having the coffee. One day your calendar is jammed, Slack won’t shut up and you’re wondering when you’re going to get any actual work done. Then suddenly—nothing. Your calendar is wide open and your laptop has gone eerily quiet. It’s weird as hell.

So get out of the house. Meet the former coworker. Have lunch with somebody in your field. Talk to the recruiter. Put on actual pants occasionally. And while you’re at it, help somebody else who is looking. Send them the job that isn’t right for you. Make the introduction. Share what you’re learning. We can all be looking for work without treating every other unemployed person like the enemy.

At 32, I didn’t have thirty years of professional relationships behind me. At 62, I do.

Score one for the old girl.

Now Let’s Talk About the Age Thing

We can’t talk about looking for work after 50 without talking about ageism. It exists. I’m 62, and I’m not naive enough to believe there won’t be employers who look at my age and decide they would rather hire someone younger.

That pisses me off, but I can’t control it.

What I can control is whether I walk into this job search already believing nobody wants me because I’m 62. If I start there, I’ve lost before anyone else even gets involved. It will affect which jobs I apply for, how I describe myself, how I interview and whether I talk about my experience like it’s an asset or something I need to apologize for.

I’m not interested in competing with a 32-year-old by pretending I’m 32. I want to compete as a really damn good 62-year-old marketing executive.

I understand modern marketing technology. I use AI. I understand digital, data and demand generation. I’m curious, I learn and I change. I’ve built teams, navigated complicated organizations, worked through transformations and made enough mistakes over the years to have learned a hell of a lot from them.

There are things I know at 62 that I couldn’t possibly have known at 32 because I hadn’t lived through them yet. I’ve seen strategies work beautifully and watched others crash and burn. I’ve hired people, developed people, inherited messes and cleaned some of them up. I’ve lived through reorganizations, leadership changes, technology changes and more corporate “transformations” than I can count.

That’s not baggage. That’s experience.

My job is to make sure an employer can see how that experience helps solve the problems sitting on their desk today.

Don’t Let Financial Panic Pick Your Next Job

This part isn’t nearly as fun to talk about, but it matters—especially when you’re laid off later in your career.

At 62, retirement isn’t some theoretical event happening someday in the distant future. It’s right there staring at me. I still have bills. I still have a mortgage. I need health insurance. And strangely enough, the electric company did not send me a lovely note saying, “Trish, we’re so sorry about the layoff. Don’t worry about us for the next six months.”

Rude.

So while I’m looking for my next job, I’m also protecting my financial runway. I’m making sure I understand my severance and health insurance, I’m applying for unemployment and I’m taking a hard look at everything going out of my bank account.

That includes what I lovingly call the stupid spending: streaming services we forgot we subscribed to, apps we don’t use, auto-ships that magically appear on the porch, supplements we bought because someone on the internet promised we’d wake up feeling 27, and all those little charges that don’t seem like much until you add them together.

I’m cutting out the stupid.

And if money may get tight, I believe in dealing with it early. Call creditors before you’re behind and ask what options may be available. The goal is to stretch the financial runway as far as possible because the more runway I have, the less likely I am to let panic choose my next job for me.

I want my next job to be the right next job, not simply the first company willing to put me back on payroll.

I’m a Marketer, So Apparently I’m Marketing Myself Now

Once I started thinking about my job search as a marketing campaign, the whole thing made a lot more sense.

If I launched a campaign at work and nobody responded, I wouldn’t run the exact same campaign another hundred times and then announce that marketing doesn’t work. I’d look at the data. Is the audience right? Is the positioning clear? Does the message suck? Are we using the right channels? Where are people dropping out?

Why should my job search be any different?

In this particular campaign, the product happens to be me. The audience is companies that need what I know how to do. My positioning is the value I bring. My resume and LinkedIn profile are part of the messaging, while recruiters, networking and applications are the channels.

If I’m applying and hearing crickets, that tells me something. If recruiters are calling but I’m not getting interviews, that tells me something. If I’m interviewing but not advancing, that tells me something too. It doesn’t automatically mean nobody wants to hire a 62-year-old woman. It means I need to look at what’s happening, learn from it and decide whether something in my strategy needs to change.

I’ve spent decades telling marketing teams not to get emotionally attached to a strategy that isn’t working.

Well, crap. Now I get to take my own advice.

Work the problem.

I’m 62. I’m Looking. And I’m Not Done.

If this is your first layoff after 50, give yourself a minute. This stuff hurts. Have the cry. Get pissed. Call your best friend and say everything you definitely shouldn’t put on LinkedIn. Losing a job can mess with your confidence, your routine, your identity and your sense of security all at once, and you don’t have to pretend it doesn’t.

I can be incredibly grateful for the people I met, the friendships I made, the leaders I learned from, the team I loved and the work we accomplished and still think the way it ended really sucks. Both things can be true. What I don’t want to do is spend the next six months staring in the rearview mirror when I need to figure out where the hell I’m going next.

My goal is to find my next corporate marketing leadership opportunity by the end of the year. I know there will be rejection along the way. Some jobs won’t be right for me, some employers will choose someone else, and there will probably be days when being 62 feels like a giant flashing disadvantage. But I also have things at 62 that I didn’t have at 32: experience, perspective, resilience and decades of relationships. I’m not going to let my age become the explanation for every opportunity that doesn’t work out—or the reason I don’t pursue one in the first place.

Most importantly, the company eliminated my position. They did not eliminate my experience. They didn’t take my relationships, my accomplishments, my knowledge, the teams I’ve led or my ability to walk into another organization and help solve problems. All of that belongs to me, and I’m taking it with me.

If you’re a woman over 50 staring at your computer wondering where the hell to start, you don’t need to figure out your entire future today. Start with the problem in front of you. Make the call. Apply for the job. Have the coffee. Ask for the introduction. Learn something about this new job market that you didn’t know yesterday, and then get up tomorrow and keep going.

We’ve spent decades building careers, solving problems, leading people, learning new things, adapting to new technology and figuring shit out when there wasn’t an instruction manual sitting in front of us. Losing a job doesn’t erase any of that.

Last Friday knocked me on my ass. It didn’t finish me. And there is still a hell of a lot of good work left in this old girl.

This job search is just one piece of my own Comeback Over 50. I’m sharing the career stuff, but I’m also talking about health, money, mindset, weight loss, finding our passion and figuring out what the hell we want the next chapter to look like. I’m not doing any of it from the finish line. I’m right here in the messy middle of it too.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/ZTuaSKvmEIA

Stronger. Fitter. Braver. And definitely not done yet.