Finding Your Career Passion in Mid-Life

Americans 55 years or older comprise 21% of the U.S. labor force according to the US Department of Labor. Here’s the problem, it is the first time in history that these 55+ year olds have a lot more than ten years remaining in the workforce. Blame the Baby Boomers for not retiring at age 65 to spend twenty years focused on golf, grandchildren and grand buffets. And even if you are in still in your 40s, these are the years when you need to evaluate and investigate secondary career paths so when you hit the decade I consider the most dangerous to your work/life, “The Fantastic Fifties,” you have the widest range of choices.

It is always exciting to meet someone in their 40s, 50s or 60s that love their jobs and the companies they work for love them back. (That is an important part, the company loves you back—but I’ll deal with that later in this post). I meet more people than ever that adore what they do for a living. Whether it is an entrepreneurial pet sitter earning more money than he ever expected; a medical capital equipment sales star turned award-winning vintner; a health information management professional turned online educator or a person who went from automotive executive to ordained minister, people are creating work they can see themselves doing post-65.

I also talk to a lot of people who say, “As soon as I am 62, I’m outta here-retired and never working again.” Those are the people who I know have not found their passion. Sometimes it is a hobby that can be monetized. Others prefer to keep their hobbies separate from work and go back to school to learn a new skill or turn their volunteer work into a paying job. How do you get started on your career exploration? You don’t have to come up with the answer immediately. Just keep the thought in the back of your mind and jot down ideas as they come to you. Focus on your strengths and activities you enjoy-- thinking about your skills that others often compliment you on performing. Over time and maybe with assistance, you will find your vocation, a word with Latin origins that means “to call.” 

Not all industries, companies or human resource professionals are prepared for the reality posed by Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964). A January 2014 Gallup Report stated, U.S. retiree age has risen steadily from 57 to 61. According to Gallup, “nearly half (49%) of boomers still working say they don’t expect to retire until they are 66 or older, including one in 10 who predict they will never retire.” Companies have not created talent development for mid-life career professionals (hoping they will gracefully retire—no thanks!) As older worker salaries stretch the range of broad bands and other compensation structures, they often find themselves targets of lay-offs because companies are not creative enough to leverage their talent, skills and abilities. So, if you are 40+ at a company that loves you back, enjoy it, use the tuition reimbursement to extend your skills and pack your resume with accolades—trust me, one day you will need it.

Creating A Career Legacy

When you leave your job, what legacy will you leave behind? What will people remember about you? What will you recall as your lasting contributions? I think all of us, no matter what our title is, should strive to leave our position better than we found it in whatever way we can. It goes along with one Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits—“Begin with the End in Mind.” What began my thought process about career legacies and planning for your life after work beyond the financial sense was the death of the legendary Penn State football coach on Sunday morning.

Joe Paterno earned five American Football Coaches Association awards, held the most records spent as a head coach at one school (46 seasons) and had the most victories for a major college coach by winning 409 games! Certainly during his tenure he certainly was a positive influence on the many lives he impacted. His legacy however has the cloud of the recent child sexual abuse scandal. Not because of anything he did physically to children—but more so for what he failed to do when he reported the abuse to “someone he thought would do something about it” instead of reporting it to law enforcement. Most of us do not have careers under media scrutiny—most of us will not have careers spanning 46 years with one employer; but we will all leave a legacy when we leave our jobs. And, every day at work we write a sentence of what we will be remembered for by our colleagues and in our own mind.

I worked with a retiring administrative assistant who was remembered by her co-workers as the “Czar of Office Supplies” she counted and monitored the paper clips, pencils and file folders that everyone requested and she kept them in a locked file cabinet behind her desk. I’m sure, in her many years of service; she had many other contributions to the company. At her cake and punch reception on her final day at the office person after person commented on the woman’s diligence in monitoring office supply expenses. Maybe in her role she felt it was the only thing in her span of control. I urge you to think more broadly. Even if you don’t get the public accolades for it when you leave, you will know inside that you left your workplace just a little better because you worked there.

 I remember my grandfather who worked his way up from a sharecropper as a young child, through a meat-packing plant as a young adult to a crane operator in a steel mill in Gary, Indiana. He told me about the dangerous conditions with glowing hot steel bars radiating heat when men walked into the plant. Above everyone, was the crane operator deftly moving tons of hot steel sitting coolly above the work floor in a position considered too skilled for the Black workers who toiled more closely to the extreme heat. From the moment he saw the crane, he said he was mesmerized and knew he wanted to show management a Black man could do that job. His legacy after 32 years of service was working his way off the floor of Youngstown Sheet & Tube, a company now long gone, to become the lead crane operator and to mentor others that would follow him after his retirement.

Have you thought about the impact you will leave on your workplace as a boss or mentor, as a co-worker, as a subject matter expert in your field or as a corporate volunteer? Share it with here and join the conversation.

Mid-Life Careers at the CrossRoads

At some point in your working life you hit a bump. Sometimes the bump is sudden—unexpectedly you lose your job,  you're demoted or somehow you lose your authority or your rank at work diminishes. At other times there’s a warning of a “speed bump” ahead. That’s when the stirring comes from inside of you. It is that feeling when you begin to lose your passion for work. It is when new management comes in and all of a sudden nothing you do is right (even though it was right for a very long time under the former management).

These bumps are what I call the Crossroads.

Sometimes they happen to you; sometimes you initiate it—but at all times ACTION occurs in your career. For one friend, her husband had a lucrative, but unfulfilling career in the financial services industry. For years the stirrings of discontent were in the back of his mind. But, the money was good and they had kids in college. Then, in the same week, he got fired and his best friend died suddenly of a heart attack. Talk about a BUMP. He was thrust into the Crossroads—rethinking everything. It was the catalyst of a career change at 43 years old to become a teacher. Now, seven years later, he’s a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Administration.

Our careers are like "mini-movies" of our lives in general. They take unexpected detours, have ups and downs, interesting people enter/exit and they require adjustments and like life; our careers rarely stay the same. Upon reflection, a career is like the Charles Dicken’s quote, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  That quote goes on to say, “it was the spring of hope and the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...”

So many external factors affect our careers now and moving into your 40s, 50s and 60s, careers get redefined—sometimes by us, sometimes for us. In some previous posts, I’ve mentioned the small amount of time we give to personal career planning. We spend more time planning our recent holiday activities and vacations than we do our career contingencies. Your company is not going to develop your career--that's on you now. It is why hitting a bump is so unsettling. It is why standing at the crossroads can be so confusing. Now that we are fresh into a new year, it is a perfect time to update your resume, freshen your LinkedIn profile or start that blog you’ve been thinking about. It may be a good time to reconnect with your former colleagues from a previous company to catch-up and do some networking. Do some thinking about how you want to spend the rest of your working years. What’s your dream? Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.” So here’s to the New Year! Explore. Dream. Discover. Take some time to focus on your career. You deserve it!