How Can You Make Sure You are Employable as a Woman in your 50s?
Fabafterfifty: Money Matters
What should we be considering as we plan to ensure we have financial security?
We all have different issues and different life situations as we prepare our finances for our fifties and beyond- here we look to ask what areas we should be addressing. For any ‘divapreneurs’, don’t forget to check out our ‘Business Matters’ section!
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Article by Ceri Wheeldon With public sector spending cuts forecast to affect the jobs of women the hardest, particularly midlife women, what can women in their 50s do to ensure that they are employable following redundancy? 1. Take stock of your skills. How current are they? How relevant are they to today’s employers? Do job advertisements in your sector ask for skills that you don’t have? Look for courses , even if you have to fund them yourself, to plug the gap. 2. Before embarking on any courses ensure your newly acquired skills will be marketable! 3. Would working in the voluntary sector, even part time for a limited period, provide you with practical experience (and references) or new skills which will increase your employability. 4. Have you highlighted all of your skills? perhaps you have skills not relevant to your most recent post which have not been emphasised in your cv. For example...
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Can we learn more from unhappy customers than happy ones?
Article by Ceri Wheeldon Particularly in today’s economic climate, can we really afford to not listen to our customers-particularly the unhappy ones! I recently had cause to complain about what I believed to be appalling service from an estate agent we had retained to sell our home on a sole agency basis. I will not go into details in terms of the catalogue of disasters which led to our frustration and disappointment, but I will share with you some of the aspects as to how our complaint has been dealt with. Lessons for ANY business There are elements which are applicable to ANY business. I was an unhappy customer. Having not been listened to at a local level, I escalated my concerns to senior management at a senior level. My concern was noted and the response fast. I was assured that the manager of the local office would meet with me,...
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Who’s Ready To Be The Boss? Setting Up A Business Over 50
Article by Karen Knott Imagine this if you can, ladies….. you wake up in the morning and a soft glow of anticipation sweeps over you at the thought of the day ahead – a day spent doing what you really want to do and doing it in on your own terms. A day spent at the helm of your own enterprise, making money by doing what you do best….. I suspect we’ve all had the ‘I wish I was my own boss/I’d love to have my own business’ fantasy, at some point during our working lives – indeed, many of us spend a great deal of time imagining it, whilst secretly doubting it will ever become a reality, especially once we hit our 50’s. Midlife women leading the charge But take heart all you doubters – there’s a very real revolution going on ‘out there’ right now, with energetic and...
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Don’t be a Victim of Rogue Doorstep Traders
Article by Fabafterfifty It seems that the summer months are the peak period for rogue doorstep traders and Figures released today by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) show that home improvements continue to top the list of complaints about doorstep rogue traders. The OFT is today urging consumers, especially the elderly and vulnerable, to be on their guard against rogue traders knocking at their door. Last year, Consumer Direct received more than 13,000 complaints about uninvited traders and almost half of these complaints (5,718) related to home maintenance work. The top five complaints about this group in 2010 were: • Roofing – 1725 (30%) • Tarmacing and paving – 1088 (19%) • Insulation – 663 (12%) • General building work – 573 (10%) • Burglar alarms – 348 (6%) With complaints about home maintenance peaking in the summer months from July through to the autumn, the OFT is launching an awareness campaign urging...
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How to increase your chance of getting job interviews.Choose the right job title.
Article by Ceri Wheeldon What’s in a job title? Does your job title reflect what YOU do? If you are looking for a new job over the age of 50, you probably have at least 30 years work experience to offer. But does your job title accurately reflect what you do? When looking for a new job it can be so easy to get sidetracked by focussing on job titles rather than job content, both when putting together your cv (and social media profiles) and searching for job vacancies. What does your job title mean to the outside world? Many job titles have been developed to fit into an organisation’s own structure- and can be fairly meaningless to the outside world. Think of Melody in the current series of the Apprentice, nobody had a clue what she actually did when she gave her job title! I can remember being given a...
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How to Make Sure You are Employable over 50 as Pension Age is Raised
Article by Ceri Wheeldon Are women in their 50s just realising how proposed pension changes affect them? Sarah Pennells covered how the changes in state pensions will affect women in their 50s in a recent Q & A (see full article), but proposed legislation effectively means“, some women in their 50s will have to wait for up to two years longer to get their state pension. And that delay comes on top of the raising of the state pension age to 65 that’s already underway. Around half a million women will have to wait 2 more years for their pension Around half a million women will have to wait for a year or longer for their state pension under the government’s plans to raise the state pension age to 66” On the one hand it can argued that bringing women’s pensions into line with men’s pensions is one more step...
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Pensions and Divorce. What’s Your Entitlement to Ex’s Pension?
Article by Sarah Pennells of SavvyWoman.co.uk Many women who get divorced don’t realise how important the pension can be. Don’t ignore it. For most couples who go through a divorce, deciding what happens to the family home is the biggest financial decision they have to make. It’s easy to see why. Your home is a tangible object and you can work out – reasonably easily – what it’s likely to be worth. It may also have huge emotional importance. The same cannot be said for a pension. It’s not only divorcing couples who find pensions a bit of a mystery, many divorce lawyers do as well. However, it can mean you lose out and – if you do – making up the shortfall can be difficult, if not impossible. Q. In a divorce, who gets the pension? A. The answer isn’t straightforward (no surprise there!) and couples can split the...
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Interview Tips for Jobseekers- Top Tips for Telephone Interviews
Article by Ceri Wheeldon Telephone (and skype) interviews are frequently being used as part of the hiring process – not just by agencies but also by employers who are looking to save time and expense in the early stages of the recruitment process. Any telephone interviews should be taken just as seriously as a face to face interview as they are an important step in the route to getting the job offer- here are some useful tips to ensure that you get the most out of the experience. 1. Prepare ahead of time. Research the company just as you would if you were going to attend a face to face interview. 2. Check to see if the interviewer has a profile on Linkedin or Facebook- it always helps to know something about the person you will be speaking with. 3. Go through the job description in detail beforehand and think about any aspects which...
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From Doom & Gloom to a Boomer Business Boom!
Article by Karen Knott “What…. are you mad? In this economic climate?” No, I know these aren’t the words you’d most like to hear when you first announce your intention to set up a new business venture but it’s one you’re quite likely to get! I guess we all know where this type of negative reaction comes from because on the face of it, things are pretty bleak ‘out there’ right now. All those things we once took for granted, like job security, predictable pension pots, early retirement options and the like, have now been consigned to ‘the good old days!’ It is women who have borne the brunt of the recession and its aftermath, so it’s little wonder that we midlife women in particular have been feeling pretty insecure about our financial futures over the last couple of years. We could be forgiven for feeling pretty negative about the...
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Is Banking part of the Digital Divide of the Generation Gap?
Article by Fabafterfifty Is the digital divide now highlighting the generation gap? It seems research indicates that the over 55s are not taking advantage of online banking. As the phasing out of cheques is discussed, it is becoming increasingly important to look at other payment methods such as telephone and online banking. With this in mind there is a campaign to urge people to not miss out on life by ignoring online banking. With the cheque guarantee scheme associated with debit and credit cards being phased out by June 30th, telephone and online banking shouldn’t be ignored, and it is certainly something we need to help the older generation understand- I know from my own time at various events over the past 12 months that there appears to be a reluctance on the part of my parents (the 70+) generation to embrace any transactions online. The Payments Council is encouraging...
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