News Technology-Based Job Search Strategy Has Abandoned Many Older Workers 2022
There has been a major transformation over the last decade in the way people seek employment opportunities. Hardcopy resumes and cover letters, newspaper advertisements, and face-to-face interviews are gradually giving way to LinkedIn and Facebook profiles and personal websites, electronically submitted career materials, job boards and web searches, and Skype interviews.
While technological advances have certainly expanded the scope of opportunities for people to take advantage of them in finding good jobs, the benefits have not been evenly distributed among all job seekers. Research conducted in recent years has shown that, in general, older workers do not follow their younger counterparts in the use of technology to design and implement job search strategies.
This is troubling as there is overwhelming evidence that older workers face greater challenges in finding valuable work. Data from the 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Displaced Workers Survey shows that people aged 50 and over took 5.8 weeks longer to find work than those aged 30-49 and 10 weeks longer than those aged 20. -29.
Data from the 2015 BLS Current Population Survey found similar results; 44.6% of employed workers aged 55 and older were out of work after 27 weeks compared to 22.2% for people under 25 and 36% for people aged 25-54.
Can Elderly Workers Learn to Use Technology-Based Job Search Tools?
Older workers are often stereotyped in ways that affect their ability to find valuable work. These stereotypes include:
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lack of motivation,
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Less willing to participate in training and use of technology,
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more resistant to change,
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Lack of trust in superiors and co-workers
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Not healthy, and
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More prone to work-family imbalance.
Many of these stereotypes do not necessarily correspond to a closer examination of the behavior patterns of older workers in relation to work. With regard to technology, there is evidence that older workers are willing to seek out and use technological tools, but many face limitations and problems that need to be addressed. Some of them are:
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Poor vision and hearing that hinders training efforts,
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Memory, memory, and motor skill problems,
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Lack of perspective on technology use, compared to young workers who grew up with technology in their lives, and
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Lacks acceptance of “learn for the sake of learning” and requires a direct link between training/use of technology and successful job/job search.
It is clear that technology is a critical component to any successful job search campaign and assuming that older workers cannot or will not take advantage of technological tools does not harm this group of people. Training programs that take into account the learning limitations of older workers are becoming more common and should be expanded. In addition, training needs to focus on skills that are clearly identified with increased employability.
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