Age is Just a Number

The Workplacer
You must have heard the adage; age is just a number, while maturity is a state of mind. This holds quite true in all walks of life and you look up to a person senior to you in age and experience to seek advice and guidance which is quite normal as well. Unfortunately when it comes to the workplace your age seems to work against you - big time, the reality is age discrimination exists in the workplace in a major way. Age brings with it many changes; you are no longer your younger self anymore. Professionally speaking you are finding it difficult to have workspaces populated by your peers, contemporaries. The unfortunate reality at the moment is you are going to sense bias and feel discriminated against in just about any workplace be it jobs in Kolkata or jobs in Gurgaon.

Stereotyper
The flip side is that recruiters and hiring managers perceive you to be too close to retirement. That is to say the bias starts right when you are looking for a job, and just started the whole process. At the most these are just misconceptions; nevertheless they can thwart your chances of landing an interview or progressing to the next round of interview. This is especially true of moving up the hierarchy to assume greater roles of leadership. Given the stark reality do your best to avoid being stereotyped and labeled while you get older, chances are you will be looked over for automobile jobs in India or accounts jobs in India. The fact remains you are as old as you feel especially in an office environment, this is all the more important to make people notice your skills, talents and experience well before they start noticing your age per se.

Media Savvyr
You may affect minor changes in your functioning to stay relevant, say change a really old email account to Gmail which is the in thing at the moment. In this day and age do not be seen lacking social media savvy, it is a big career no-no, create a decent profile on LinkedIn for if you don’t you are allowing complete edge to a younger candidate who is viewed to be reasonably tech savvy for medical jobs in India or corporate planning jobs in India. Again it helps to leave out a few dates on your resume, say the year of graduation, likewise providing decade and a half experience is good enough. Do not go about advertising your age on the resume, it is counterproductive in the initial stages at least. Check out websites like Mashable to keep in touch with current happenings. Keeping a finger on the pulse of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit etc helps to a great extent as well.

An Assetr
Refrain from being a know all, actively seek out companies that see and treat you as an asset. Experience has taken you through ups and downs. Aim to be flexible with change, always keep your eye on the bigger picture. And definitely go with organizations who value differences, you stand a better chance of succeeding at such places. Best job search sites offer great resume tips, interview tips and career tips to help you out. When all's said and done be true to yourself, be respectful to colleagues and clients, dress in clothes that give you a feel of being on top of your game, age has nothing to do with these traits but they surely correlate to happiness and success in a big way.