Open To Work Banners, One Year of Job Hunting, And Ageism
Episode 318 - I answer real questions from professionals who are worried about a prolonged job search. We talk about whether to use the LinkedIn Open To Work banner, how to cope when your job search has stretched past a year, and what to do when employers say you are “too senior”.
In my inbox and on my Zoom screen, the same faces keep appearing. They are senior managers, directors, heads of function, sometimes C suite executives. They are in their forties, fifties, and sixties. They have built careers inside large companies, delivered turnarounds, navigated crises, and led hundreds of people.
Now they are sitting at home with a LinkedIn tab open, hovering over a tiny feature that has come to carry enormous emotional weight: the “Open to Work” banner.
In a recent webinar I was asked questions from corporate professionals currently looking for roles. The questions were extremely relevant:
- Should I turn on the green ring?
- What if I have been looking for a job for over a year?
- How do I explain walking away from a toxic workplace?
- Why do I keep hearing that I am “too senior” for roles I know I could do well?
On their own, these look like individual dilemmas. Put them together against the backdrop of today’s labor market and they become something else: A quiet case study of how white collar workers experience this moment in the economy.
We are living through what analysts have called a white collar recession, with layoffs rising across knowledge industries and workers with university degrees taking much longer than expected to find a new job. At the same time, rolling layoffs and smaller, ongoing job cuts are replacing the big headline-grabbing restructures of the past, creating a constant hum of insecurity rather than one loud crash.
The Banner That Carries Too Much Meaning
The “Open to Work” ring was designed as a simple visibility feature. LinkedIn itself claims that people who use it are more likely to receive messages about job opportunities, and some recruiters do say they prioritize profiles that clearly signal availability.
At the same time, there are some in the recruitment industry that warns job seekers to avoid the tag because it “signals desperation” or marks them as less desirable. The result is predictable. Highly accomplished people, already shaken by redundancy or a failed job search, now feel they are being tested on their ability to send exactly the right micro-signal to the market.
When my clients ask whether they should use the banner, what they are really asking is whether it is safe to be visible as unemployed.
Younger workers tend to treat employment status as a more fluid state. Many have grown up with contract roles, side projects, and portfolio careers. For them, publicly being “between things” carries less shame. For professionals who spent decades in a world where a secure, permanent job was the ultimate proof of competence, visibility feels more dangerous.
I give them a practical answer. If you have built a strong and engaged LinkedIn network over years, a public “Open to Work” signal can mobilize that community in powerful ways. I have seen clients announce redundancy and receive thousands of views and dozens of warm introductions within hours. When the groundwork has been done, the green ring is an amplifier.
If your network is small, cold, or underutilized, the risk reward ratio shifts. A better starting point can be the quieter version that only recruiters see, combined with a deliberate effort to warm up your network through consistent posting and conversation. The feature itself is neither magical nor cursed. It simply magnifies whatever presence you have created.
The deeper issue is our discomfort with being seen in a moment of need. That is not a technology problem. It is a cultural one.
The Long Search That Was Never Going to Be Short
Most people I speak to still carry the three month myth. Somewhere deep inside, despite all evidence to the contrary, they believe that a serious professional should only ever be out of work for a quarter. After that point, the internal story darkens. They start to question not just their tactics, but their talent.
The data tell a different story. Long term unemployment has increased in many advanced economies since the 2010s, and older workers in particular find it harder to re-enter the labor market after a break. Research also shows that unemployment spells longer than six months are more damaging to mental health than shorter ones, although there is debate over how much of that effect reflects pre-existing vulnerabilities rather than the passage of time alone.
Behind those statistics sit the realities of executive hiring. Senior roles take longer to open, longer to structure, and longer to fill. There are fewer of them. Many are never advertised. Boards change course, budgets move, strategies are rewritten midway through a recruitment process. In that context, a year without a permanent role is not unusual. It is often the natural consequence of operating at the pointy end of the pyramid.
This is not a comforting message to someone who has bills to pay, children to support, or visa conditions to meet. But it is a more accurate one. When expectations are misaligned, people blame themselves for a timetable the market was never going to meet.
The mental health impact is real. Qualitative studies of long term unemployed people describe a combination of anxiety, shame, loss of routine, and gradual erosion of identity. In my coaching sessions, I see the corporate version of that story. High performers begin to avoid social situations, delay replying to friends, or stop posting on LinkedIn altogether because they do not know how to answer the simple question: “How is work going.”
The answer is not to simply “stay positive”. The answer is to pair a realistic view of timelines with a diversified search strategy and a support structure that separates your self-worth from your current title.
Too Senior, Too Expensive, Too Old
At the heart of many questions I receive lies a phrase that is both vague and cutting: “You are too senior.”
Sometimes this is true in a narrow, organisational sense. Hiring managers worry about bringing in someone who outstrips the role in scope or authority. They imagine a candidate becoming bored, stirring up politics, or leaving as soon as something bigger appears.
Too often, however, “too senior” functions as a polite wrapper around age bias.
Recent research from Australia shows that almost a quarter of HR professionals now classify workers between 51 and 55 as “older”, up from 10 percent just two years ago. Employers in that study acknowledged persistent barriers to hiring older candidates, citing concerns about salary expectations and “too much experience” even while reporting skills shortages in their own organisations.
Internationally, policy debates tell a similar story. Governments raise retirement ages, urge people to work longer, and warn of pension shortfalls, while many employers quietly filter out applicants above a certain age bracket. In France, for example, age is now perceived as the most common form of discrimination in employment, ahead of disability and nationality.
For my clients, the contradiction is personal. They are told they must stay in the workforce for another decade or more in order to secure adequate retirement savings. At the same time, algorithms and hiring managers treat them as already past their prime.
What distinguishes those who still manage to move is not cosmetic youthfulness. It is currency.
The professionals who keep getting traction late in their careers are those who stay close to where the work is going: the new systems, the different ways teams are structured, the shifting expectations of customers and regulators. They are the ones who can talk fluently about AI as it relates to their field, not in buzzwords but in real constraints and opportunities. They are the ones whose LinkedIn posts read like dispatches from the front line of their profession rather than reflections on a world that has already passed.
Ageism absolutely exists. So does the risk of quietly ageing out of your own discipline by losing curiosity about its direction.
Toxic Workplaces and the Quiet Courage of Walking Away
One of the more painful questions that came through my Q&A concerned a toxic workplace. The listener had reached a point where staying felt untenable, yet leaving carried obvious risk. How would they explain a resignation that was not followed immediately by another role.
This is where global news about layoffs and job cuts intersects with a more intimate reality. When headlines chronicle another round of redundancies or yet another tech giant shedding thousands of employees, we talk about “workers” as if they were a homogenous group. We rarely discuss the individuals who choose to walk away before the axe falls.
Some of those individuals are my clients. They resign from roles where workloads have become unsustainable or where values are being compromised. They prefer the uncertainty of the market to the certainty of remaining in a place that is slowly damaging their health.
From a purely financial perspective, this is not always the rational decision. In countries without robust safety nets, quitting a job without another lined up can jeopardise access to healthcare or risk mortgage stress. Yet to present the choice as purely financial is to ignore the toll that chronic stress often takes on productivity, creativity, parenting, and long term wellbeing.
The public narrative around work still celebrates those who stick it out. We glorify resilience, often conflating it with endurance. What I see, especially among experienced professionals, is a quieter form of courage: the willingness to say that a situation is no longer acceptable, even when there is no immediate alternative.
The task then becomes to craft a clean, measured explanation that does not turn an honest decision into a red flag. That is more art than science, and it is something many people understandably struggle to do for themselves.
When Your Friends Cannot Help With Your Job Search
There is another underreported aspect of this white collar recession. Many of the people most affected are the first in their families to have reached the levels they have now lost.
They cannot turn to parents who understand executive recruitment in a global company. Their closest friends may be in very different occupations or stages of life. Online, advice is plentiful but contradictory.
One viral post will insist that everyone must be a “personal brand” machine, posting daily content and broadcasting vulnerability. Another will warn that any sign of unemployment will scare employers away. Some influencers tell candidates never to work with recruiters. Others insist that recruiters hold all the power.
In that noise, experienced professionals often default to the people they trust: partners, long term friends, perhaps a mentor from early in their career. Those people can provide emotional support, but their information about how hiring actually works at senior levels may be outdated or incomplete.
I see the consequences every week. People apply for roles well below their capability because a friend suggested it “might be easier to get something more junior.” They spend hours on cover letters that will never be read because someone told them “hiring managers still care about those.” They treat job boards as the only channel because they do not know what else to do.
The gap is not intelligence. It is access to accurate, current information about how senior hiring decisions are really made.
The Quiet Reset That Needs to Happen
The white collar workers filling my calendar are not asking for sympathy. They are asking for clarity.
They want to know how to signal availability without being written off. How to tolerate a search that stretches beyond old rules of thumb. How to hold their value in the face of age bias. How to recover a sense of agency after leaving a damaging environment. How to navigate a job market where AI tools screen resumes and “rolling layoffs” have become a business norm.
The answers are not neat. They vary by sector, geography, seniority, and personal circumstance. But there are a few common moves I find myself recommending again and again.
Treat your professional presence as a living asset, not a panic button to hit only when you need work. That means showing up regularly on platforms like LinkedIn with informed commentary, not waiting until redundancy to start posting.
Stop thinking of your job search as either reactive or proactive. You need all three modes: a tuned profile that attracts inbound interest, a disciplined approach to advertised roles, and a curated list of organisations and people you stay close to regardless of current vacancies.
Be honest with yourself about your stamina. Long searches grind people down. Build routines that protect your physical and mental health in the same way you once protected your quarterly deliverables.
Finally, recognise that expertise about the job market is real expertise. You would not attempt a complex tax restructure or a major legal matter entirely on your own. Treat your career with the same seriousness. Seek out voices who see what is happening across companies and sectors, not just within your own circle.
In a period where white collar confidence has fallen to its lowest levels in years and layoffs are both frequent and quiet, experienced professionals are absorbing a disproportionate share of the shock. Many feel they are facing it alone.
They are not. Their questions echo in chat boxes during webinars, in coaching sessions, and across comments sections wherever midcareer workers gather. Paying attention to those questions tells us more about the health of our corporate world than any quarterly earnings report.
And for those living them, the questions are not abstract. They are the raw material from which the next chapter of a working life must be built.
About the Host, Renata Bernarde
Hello, I’m Renata Bernarde, the Host of The Job Hunting Podcast. I’m also an executive coach, job hunting expert, and career strategist. I teach professionals (corporate, non-profit, and public) the steps and frameworks to help them find great jobs, change, and advance their careers with confidence and less stress.
If you are an ambitious professional who is keen to develop a robust career plan, if you are looking to find your next job or promotion, or if you want to keep a finger on the pulse of the job market so that when you are ready, and an opportunity arises, you can hit the ground running, then this podcast is for you.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Timestamps to Guide Your Listening
- 03:49 Introduction to Job Search Questions
- 12:46 Social Network and Job Advice
- 18:01 Dealing with Seniority and Ageism
- 27:05 Presenting Employment Gaps
- 29:08 Unique Job Roles and Search Strategies
- 32:12 International Coaching and Support
- 35:24 Concluding Thoughts and Final Question
Transcript
Today’s episode is completely unscripted. I’m here sitting talking to you after coming back from a lovely afternoon at the beach and I’m going to review with you some of the most interesting questions that I received last week when I delivered a webinar to over a hundred job seekers. The questions are great. I hope that these questions will resonate with you as well. Let’s get going.
Okay, so I changed plans and I decided to postpone the topic that I was going to talk about today and discuss these questions that I received last week from my new followers, people that probably didn’t know me yet and decided to show up to a webinar organized by callings.ai. I will put a link to this amazing job search platform below if you’re interested to.
find out more and potentially participate in all the webinars that they organize. Over 600 people signed up, over 120 people showed up. Since last week, 120 plus people watched the webinar. roughly, I don’t know, 50 % have watched the webinar or attended live. And I received some interesting questions during that time.
challenging sometimes you’re delivering this webinar. There’s just so much that you plan. But of course, people that are there are very keen to have their questions answered. I’m hoping that today by giving these questions a bit more air and a bit more of my thoughts and ideas that that these new followers will stick around and follow the podcast. So if you’re new, ⁓ click the link below to follow, subscribe. I don’t know where you’re listening. Could be Apple, could be
Spotify, YouTube, if you’re watching me on YouTube, you will see that I’m very relaxed today. I just got out of the ⁓ beach here in Melbourne is really interesting because we ⁓ have a very long winter. I think if you’re in the US and you’re sort of up North, you will understand when there’s a good day, you just want to.
leave everything behind and enjoy a bit of sun. And that’s how we felt today. So we decided even to postpone the release of the podcast a little bit, just to allow ourselves the enjoyment of the sunny weather. ⁓ Okay. Let’s talk about these questions. The first one is a big one. And I know it’s one that will resonate with a lot of you. I’m going to read it to you. How do you deal with the possible shame and stigma?
around whether to put up the open to work banner. Sorry, my notes are not showing up completely. Putting up the open to work banner on LinkedIn. Does it work? Okay. That’s an interesting one. I think about things a bit more strategically and I want to share that first before we address the more psychological issues with the open to work banner.
I also have a very interesting example to share with you about something that happened today with a client of mine that added the open to work banner to her profile. Okay.
If you have a lot of followers, okay, by a lot, mean thousands, 3000, 4000, and those are nurtured connections. So you are active on LinkedIn. You share often on LinkedIn. You’re always on LinkedIn posting, not only posting, but most importantly, commenting and liking other people’s posts. That means you’re nurturing those relationships.
If you find yourself without a job and you put the open to work banner on your profile, you will get lots of views, right? And if you’re somebody that has a good reputation within your network, then they will come to you and ask, do you need any help? Do you want to have a coffee? Do you want to catch up? Or maybe we should discuss this because we need somebody like that will happen because you’ve nurtured that network.
put the open to work banner and you only have 300, 400, 500 followers or even a thousand. It may not be beneficial. The return on the investment or the ROI is not very good for you because you don’t have a lot of eyeballs seeing it. And some of the risks of putting the banner up made
outweigh the benefits of having the banner on. A couple of the risks are for more conservative professionals, especially depending on which profession you have or where you are in the world. You know, if you have a banner and you’re starting to connect with people now and you’re sending them connection requests or commenting,
People usually think, ⁓ no, I don’t want to help them, you know, like I don’t have the time, you know, people are kind of selfish that way, especially if, you know, they’re not held accountable. If they’re in the comfort of their own home, they might just not accept your invitation. Right? And this may or may not happen. It’s a risk we take. Regardless, you can be open to work, recruiters only.
And this is, think, what matters most. Strategically, that’s where I think the benefit of LinkedIn is. It’s for you to be open to work recruiters only. So recruiters know that you’re open to work. They are the ones that will be filtering through their searches on their LinkedIn platform for professionals who could potentially be good candidates for their clients. Now, in order for them
to see that you’re open to work because you don’t have a banner. These recruiters need to have a special LinkedIn platform. It’s the recruitment platform and most recruiters and most HR departments with talent acquisition professionals working in those departments will 100 % have that LinkedIn platform. Anybody that has LinkedIn, let me…
Anybody that is a sort of medium size to bigger organization will have that. You can be open to work even if you are currently working. ⁓ There is a tiny risk there, but according to LinkedIn, the organization that you work for does not see that you are open to work. So they will show it to every other one of their subscribers, except your company. Right? So let’s say you work at Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola won’t see that you’re open to work, but Pepsi will. So it might be a good idea to be open to work forever and ever casually browsing, which is what I recommend my clients to do.
So there is that. There is the more strategic, more sort of rational, logical way of thinking about the open to work and how it works according to the amount of work that you have put on LinkedIn prior to being open to work. The shame and the stigma, I’m assuming that whoever, I mean, I could be wrong. I’m assuming that whoever posted this question is…
older, you know, I think if you’re in your mid twenties and thirties, which like my youngest of clients, usually my clients are in their mid forties and fifties, they may not have that sense of shame and stigma. think that clients that are in their fifties, late fifties are the ones that are not used to this because we have been brought up in the nineties and early two thousands in a very different culture of never showing vulnerability.
But this is what I want to share with you that I mentioned that happened today, which is such a great coincidence. A client of mine who has lots of followers, she advocates on LinkedIn for a specific area of expertise that she has developed over the years. So alongside her job, she has been quite outspoken about issues that are dear to her. So she has ⁓ a good followership and she’s active on LinkedIn on a daily basis.
So she posted that she was open to work. So she added the banner. She was made redundant. Her job will be made redundant in a few days. She’s still working, but she already added the open to work green banner. She posted within one hour of her posting, she got a thousand views on her post. You can see that with your insights. If you have ⁓ LinkedIn, you know this.
And more, more importantly, she got lots of DMs. So she got lots of messages of people that want to connect with her, talk to her, meet with her, et cetera. And that’s what I want you to remember that you can do, right? Even if you have less followers, if you want to be vulnerable like that and you have a good strategy behind it, then maybe it’s a good idea to test out. Usually what happens with my clients that are
like normal professionals and don’t have thousands and thousands of followers. We do not start with the open to work banner. We navigate the first few months working together without it. And then if we can’t get any traction, we might change it up because, you know, we like to not change the team that’s winning. But if the team isn’t winning, we need to start thinking about different strategies. What else am I going to say?
This is a client that has been working with me for some time. She’s inside my ⁓ private LinkedIn group that I have for people that want to be more active on LinkedIn. And she not only posted it externally, but then she posted it inside the group so that other people within the group could see her insights and the analytics. So that was really lovely for her to do that. And we meet weekly to review ⁓ what we’ve done during the week on LinkedIn.
and we’ll be discussing and workshopping her post and what everybody else within the group can learn from it. So if you’re interested in that, in LinkedIn presence and participating on a group like that, it’s a ⁓ monthly membership and I’d love to see you there. So make sure that you learn more. I will put a link below. I don’t have a proper page for it on my website. It was kind of a ⁓ better thing that I just came up with.
And Andre, who’s my husband and develops my website for me, he’s like, we need to create a page for it. And I haven’t done it yet. So apologies.
But the group has been going on for a few months now and it’s doing really well. OK. ⁓ What if our social network does not have those who can give us advice on job search? That’s why I have my job as a coach. Isn’t it? And gosh, you’re not alone. I didn’t have people helping me and sometimes you may even.
Look, there’s so many things to consider. There was a time in my life where all my friends were nurses and I love them and they are like my oldest friends in Australia, but they didn’t really know how to help me. I could vent with them and I could share my frustrations and then I would get up and leave if they were talking about their jobs because I cannot cope with blood and anything to do with, you know, surgery or anything like that.
I would then talk to the boys because that was too much for me. ⁓ Yeah, so I get you. I understand you. And then you sometimes have people that are in the same industry sector as you have been or you are. But they are from a different generation. I also felt that.
Like I’m thinking of a particular person who was so instrumental at the beginning of my career here in Australia when I first landed in the early 2000s. And then after a few years, she just couldn’t get me anymore. Like I wasn’t working for her anymore. And, but she still saw me as that more junior professional and I had already sort of gone up and up and I think she didn’t.
quite follow what I was doing. LinkedIn wasn’t big at the time. LinkedIn didn’t even exist at the time. So she really couldn’t see it. Then eventually, yeah, I changed sectors and even though she’s still a big fan and I, you know, I, really love her and I think it’s vice versa. I don’t, can’t, can’t go to her for advice. Things have changed a lot in my life and in my career. So I a hundred percent get it and
I’ll be honest with you, my biggest competition as a career coach, specialized and experienced professionals looking for work. My biggest competition is not other coaches. My biggest competition is you trying to do things alone. Right? You thinking, no, I’m going to save money and I’m just going to do, I’m going to listen to the podcast and I’m just going to wing it.
And that’s fine. I have the free resources, A, to educate you on what going through recruitment and selection and job searching really is all about. It is about a competition. It’s not about you. It’s about a whole ecosystem where you are one piece of the puzzle. Potentially you won’t fit in the puzzle. And the second reason why I share my resources.
is to also educate you on the benefits of hiring a coach, right? So my pipeline of clients comes from this podcast. That’s why I have so many clients overseas. It’s because 75 % of you are not in Australia. Almost 70 % of you are in the US. So.
I, most of my clients are in the U S Canada, UK, and, and then Australia. So it’s really interesting. Thank you so much for listening to me for trusting me. ⁓ even though I’m down under and have a weird accent and sometimes I mispronounce things and I bet you think it’s funny. ⁓ so yeah, so I get it. If you.
Don’t have a social network that can give you advice on job search. Work with a coach, go to my website, see the sort of services that I provide. And some of them are really cheap and some of them are more expensive for a reason. I want people with different investment appetites or ability to invest to be able to purchase anything that will be better than doing it alone. Funny story and something that I’m really considering for 2026 and beyond is.
You don’t like my cheap services as much as my expensive services. It’s really interesting that people have this pricing psychology so ingrained that when I offer something that is beloved by my clients, by my clients, I mean, my private coaching clients, like the 31 days of action, like, reset your career. You’re like, maybe that’s too cheap. Maybe what I need is.
paying Renata thousands of dollars so that I can work one-on-one with her. And I’m like, no, like these things were designed for you, for experienced professionals, white collar workers. If you’re sitting behind a desk in an office or at home, you’re my ideal client. Believe me, everything I have on that website is designed for you. This podcast included, of course. Okay. Another question.
What if you have been job hunting for a year at least? And reply on gig not on gig, me. I don’t know what that means. Okay. What if you have been job hunting for a year at least? I get it. I’ll tell you what. I have worked with clients that have been without a job for years. Years, right?
This is not unusual for me to help you with. This is not unusual for this to happen to one’s career. Okay? I remember when I left a job, this is the sort of thing, I will talk about this later, but this is the sort of thing that we can do in Australia, but hardly ever in the US because of your insurance being tied up with work. But like sometimes we get bummed out.
in Australia, we just leave. And even for a Brazilian, that was hard for me to sort of come to terms with, you know, that security that you have in a country with a good welfare system where you can just walk out if you don’t like your job. Anyway, left a job, went to see an executive search partner, really fancy woman. She then worked at Corn Ferry and then worked at somewhere else, but she was with Alex Carr at the time.
And she said, it’s very likely that you will be without a job for a year. And I almost fainted because even though I thought I can do this, you know, I can just find another job. I thought it will be three months, like most people at that executive level think, you know, three months. I mean, three months is nothing these days, you know, for an executive professional, somebody at that.
top of the pyramid ⁓ reporting to a CEO? Nope. Nope. It will take you longer. Especially if like me, you don’t want to move. You don’t want to move states or cities. ⁓ You have a specific niche to work with, then you are staying. You are staying in a lane that requires you to
wait until a job is available to you. It’s not about you wanting a job. It’s about the market wanting you and needing you. And the market has a cadence that is seasonal within a year that is affected by other socioeconomic issues as well. It is normal and we need to start this mystifying this idea that job hunting will be a 12 week. ⁓
gig. No, no, it will be longer. ⁓ So hold your horses, ask for help, get family support, sell things if you need to. The ups and downs of life, they happened. That’s why we have savings. If you’re lucky, that’s why we have assets. If you’re lucky as well and family to support you.
That doesn’t mean that you’re never going to go up again in your career. It means that you need to navigate this low. Okay. And I know it’s hard. My clients have done it. It’s really challenging, but they have overcome it. And so will you. So will you. Okay.
All right, another question. Best way to deal with you’re too senior for roles you’re interested in and dealing with ageism. my gosh, how many times have we addressed this question? No matter how many times I do Q &A, I mean, this has been in every single Q &A, right? Like if you’ve been listening for a while, I know that I have amazing loyal people that listen to everything I do.
How many times have I spoken about ageism? But let’s do it again. I will do it very quickly this time because I don’t want to bore people that have listened to me talk about this already. If you are too senior for a role, chances are you will not get that role. There, I said it. I’m going to die on that hill, but it’s a really tough thing for an employer to hire you. And yes, be angry.
Please don’t be angry at me, be angry with the world. But that’s how it is. There are so many factors affecting decision-making for bringing somebody in. are career mobility inside the organization, ⁓ performance issues, the willingness for employers to ⁓ develop professionals for succession planning.
⁓ What else? ⁓ So many things. The fact that anecdotally, I’m sure there could be research out there, I just haven’t checked, but anecdotally, we know that you go into these roles that are more junior and you’re not happy. All of a sudden, yes, finally you have income coming in, you have a job, you feel better, but it doesn’t last. It’s like when we have these… ⁓
surveys about or research about people that win the lottery. They are happy for like three, three to six months and then they are just like normal again. Yep. That will be you probably even worse than normal. You are going to be very frustrated by the fact that you don’t have that status quo that you had in your last job and you will want to leave. And then there are other issues that are more bias related. You know, the fact that you might be
more experienced than the person hiring you. I have mentioned this before. I once had a consultation with a professional and he wasn’t looking for work. He was actually looking for a way out of telling a whole bunch of people that had applied for a job that he advertised that they were too senior for the role. He just didn’t know how to do it. ⁓ Like they could have my job, Renata. What do I tell them? These are amazing people, but that’s not the people that we want for this role. And well.
We workshopped ⁓ what to do and I really enjoy that conversation to be honest, because I wasn’t expecting it. All right. Ageism. The way of dealing with ageism is not to age. of course you’re going to get older, but you cannot age out of your profession. Okay. So aging out of your profession means you’re not reading, you’re not following the news, not current affairs.
news about your industry, your area of expertise, following up what’s happening to your career in the future, the forecasting and futurists out there telling you what’s going to happen, how you’re going to lead in the future, how you’re going to manage projects in the future, how accounting is going to be done in the future, how… ⁓
civil engineering will be, whatever it is that you do, you need to be aware of ⁓ what’s happening in your profession. And that’s really important. And also not age out of the way that people interact. So yes, I loved going into town every day and having lunch with my colleagues and et cetera. That was a great time. It’s not going to happen again. Now, most of us work hybridly.
⁓ Desks are hot desks. ⁓ You may not ever see your boss because you go to work at different days. So there’s all those things and in learning how to work with that type of asynchronous communication is really important. Learning how to work with the online environments, understanding the importance of show. This is showing up. If you’re watching me on YouTube.
Well, actually, this is a terrible day for me to be telling you this because I’m not wearing any makeup and I just came out from the beach. But at least I’m dressed professionally. I have a professional background. mean, this is important. I don’t want to talk to a professional who is a C level professional or an experienced professional and they’re sitting in outer space. That’s not what we want to see. You know what I mean with those fake backgrounds of fish tanks and
and whatnot, no, no, this is how you don’t age out of your profession. Okay, so let’s learn how to work with it. Okay, how do I present a year long employment gap so the focus stays on my strengths?
That is a very interesting question. ⁓ And I think that working in a group like the one that’s coming up ⁓ in a week’s time, my holiday job search sprint is the best way to workshop what’s the better way of showing that gap. Because is it really a gap or did you have surgery for eight months of that gap? Or you had…
kids or you had, even if you’re a father that’s still parental leave or somebody in your family passed away or you needed a break and you went studying or you went overseas for months. You know what I mean? Like, how do we explain this? And sometimes people say it’s a gap, but they’ve been volunteering or they’ve been doing pro bono work or even they have been consulting, but they don’t add it to their LinkedIn profile. So
I need to workshop with you how to best present that in a way that it’s genuine, that it’s truthful, and that will add value to your profile. Do we need to explain it? ⁓ Sometimes, and I guess a lot of the times, I’m actually removing those explanations because I don’t want people to over explain themselves on LinkedIn. Like if it’s been 10 years and there’s like a two year gap between one job or another and you felt the need to explain it.
Is it material enough? Since then you’ve paddled the jobs and they’ve been good jobs. Remove that information. That’s too much information. So I’m assuming that in this case, it’s something recent that you want to explain. I would love to workshop that with you because I don’t think that there is a size that fits all, but I do think that there are different ways that really work for professionals. ⁓
This one was an interesting one as well. I hear this a lot from clients. My role is different. There is only one of, I’m kind of paraphrasing this because it was in the Q &A box and I don’t have access to that on Zoom when I download it. I don’t know why. ⁓ So these are the questions were in the chat and the Q &A questions disappeared. But this is what it said. It said, look, my role is different. I think the person was like a financial controller.
There is only one of me in each organization. Fair enough. So proactive job search, as you explained, doesn’t work well for me. I need to be reactively applying. So let me explain proactive, reactive and passive. Proactive. You go out to your network, you introduce yourself to recruiters, you let people know that you’re interested in working for specific types of organizations. You do research on the organizations.
start following people, that’s proactive. Reactive, you go to the job search board like Indeed, like LinkedIn search or ethical jobs, MaxList, you name it. And then you apply for jobs that are advertised. And then passive is you optimize your profile to the max, like when people do LinkedIn audits with me, you know.
And then you just sit and wait for the messages to come your way. This works really well, especially if you’re currently employed. I mean, of course you should have an optimized LinkedIn profile anyway, but if you’re not in a hurry, the passive ⁓ optimize activity on LinkedIn plus a great profile that is optimized for searchability, which means recruiters will find you because of its keyword rich and so forth.
then that’s ⁓ fantastic. Just sitting there, just waiting for those messages to arrive, and then you apply for the roles that they see you as a good fit for. The best thing is to have a combination of all three. But you have to remember, most of my private clients, they are C-level professionals. There is only one of each of them in each organization, and they are still doing a lot of the proactive job search.
Right. And they’re doing this planting those seeds, nurturing those relationships so that when the job is thought of, like even before it’s advertised for real in a job board, people are sort of putting a PD together or an idea together or they are the person has just resigned. Say if it’s a position that already exists, they are already tapping that person on the shoulder. It has happened to me.
Many times in my career, happens to my clients. Careers a lot because we nurture those relationships. This is a combination of things that you can do, especially as you start reaching the top of the pyramid of an organizational structure. I’m in Canada. Does your coaching work for me? Yes. I have clients in Canada.
I have people from Canada in my, ⁓ in the holiday job search sprint already because ⁓ it opened. I mean, I’m gonna, I mean, you probably have seen the ads if you’re ⁓ watching this, if you’re not, I mean, you might be listening to this a year from now. So maybe skip this part, but ⁓ it’s the end of 2025.
On the 1st of December, we start with the holiday job search sprint. This idea is something that I play around with every year. How do I do this? How do I help people? I think this year more than ever, I really wanted to do it because it seems like we have more layoffs than ever. I mean, not than ever, but at least five years that ⁓ since, you know, let’s say mid pandemic. And ⁓
I feel like people have been laid off in April and they still don’t have a job. And what do you want to do during Christmas and New Year? Do you want to relax, which is fine, relax and come back stronger next year? Or do you have that sense of urgency where you’re like, can’t afford to relax? That was me. Every time this happens to me, I think I have this real sense of, I can’t afford it. You know, I couldn’t afford it.
So I want to be there for people. It is already my busiest time of the year. I cannot take a break December, January, right? Why? Because layoffs happen. Layoffs happen the day before Christmas. I kid you not. Layoff happens all the time. In Australia also we have burnout and people resigning even in the US, but mostly in Australia. We have that a lot. So I’m working.
So I might as well run this program. It’s a six week program. I’ve priced it for sale. I’ve priced it so that as many people can afford it. And it’s still worth my while. Like I need it to be something that will keep me going. And I love working with groups because groups are so cool. Like we, I, I’m le, I’m teaching you and giving you tips and advice, but you’re also learning from each other. It’s so.
Wonderful. I learned so much from all of you when I’m doing groups. So and it’s not a course. It’s more like an accountability group. That’s why it’s called the sprint. Like we’re going to do this together. We’re going to make sure that every week we’re coming up with the best possible tasks to do that week, specifically December, January. It’s a tough time. You can’t do things that you would normally do in October. You have to be very strategic and
I have all this knowledge that I need to share with people that want to be job searching during this time. and specific knowledge about how to job search during this time. ⁓ Yeah. And I think the question that I want to finish off with is this one where the person asked me, you know, how do I explain that I left
the organization and I was not laid off and I left because it was a toxic workplace. This is a tough one, I think. And I think I did not answer it well at all during the webinar. I wasn’t expecting it, mainly because I knew the webinar would be mostly attended by Americans.
After all, it was organized by Collins.ai and they are an American job search platform, even though the platform works really well worldwide. have found I have clients that are using it in different countries and it’s working for them. yeah, most people that attended were from the US. This definitely was in Australia. I asked, are you from Australia? And they said yes. So it was an anonymous question, but they definitely said they were Australians.
I say this because Australians, like I said, can have this luxury of leaving a job and still it doesn’t affect their ability to have health provided to them, insurance or, I mean, we pay our own insurance, but even if you don’t have private insurance in Australia, we have Medicare. So it’s okay, right?
You are without a job for a while, you have job seekers, like there’s so many things that help. ⁓ So I see that happening more often in Australia. So if the workplace is really toxic, sometimes people just get up and leave and you will see that I have episodes about this. And I don’t think I have been clear enough during those episodes. Like they mostly cater for people outside of the US.
I don’t see that happening as much in the US, but correct me if I’m wrong. I did interview this lovely woman. forget her name. I’ll put the link below. And she did run out during the pandemic and left her career completely changed. And she’s feeling much better, much healthier now. And I interviewed her because it was, I think, such a big thing in the US, you know, that big resignation.
that happened during a time of boom, think people had, there were more job offers during that time as well than there are now. ⁓ So toxic workplaces. I find that if you work with specific recruiters who are experts in their industry, they will know, even in the US. In the webinar I said in Australia, like if you work for a specific organization,
And now you are without a job. If it’s been in the news, it’s kind of well known. They will know. You don’t have to over explain it. We can come up with wording around it. ⁓ But even overseas, So recruiters are very knowledgeable about organizations. They see people like you all the time. So they’re very knowledgeable about organizations, pitching people out, even if they’re not being restructured and laid off, but they’re
just exhausted from burnout that they come to recruiters more often. know, let’s say, know, company A, lots of people are applying for jobs. Company B, hardly anyone is coming out and talking to recruiters. They know that there’s something with company A that has to do with maybe the leadership style or the culture. So I want you to remember that that happens. That doesn’t mean that you can’t, you need to, it still means you need to measure your words.
What I did say in the webinar that I think it’s important is for you to feel comfortable opening up in confidence with people that are close to you about the reasons why you left. So your close friends, your family, I think it’s important for you to have that vulnerability to let them know that it was too much. ⁓
I have a lovely friend in my life. Her name is Hannah. She has been on the podcast. I will try to remember to put everything in the show notes. And Hannah once had a catch up with me and she said, you have to give yourself permission to feel human with a few people. She was actually giving feedback to me because she felt that I was oversharing some of my frustrations about my job with people that didn’t need to know those frustrations. I was much younger than.
I’ve known her for years. In fact, I just did a breath work workshop over the weekend with her son. ⁓ It was awesome. So I’ve learned how to breathe finally. Anyway, going back to Hanna. So she’d said that to me and I really valued her and I will never forget. It’s really important when we receive feedback like that. I mean, she was so kind and gentle and delicate. I didn’t feel like she was giving me constructive feedback.
⁓ in a negative way, it was really important for me to hear that and learn that. And now I pass that learning on to you. We need to know who to talk to about our frustrations at work and who not to talk to. I’m teaching that at the university. So I’m teaching at the moment, Career Planning and Design for master’s students at Monash University. And that’s one of the communications exercise that we do is understanding how
our stories travel through the organization, through our network and is communicated differently from what we first communicated ourselves and how we need to take as much control of that as we can because it affects our reputation, it affects our brand equity, personal brand, it’s important if you like it or not, the wording I think is very controversial, but personal branding exists and we just need to…
have as much control of that brand as possible. Otherwise, other things will affect that brand. So, yes, I guess that’s it. That’s it for now. So I don’t want to talk too much about the holiday job search sprint because you may be listening about this to this episode in the future. The good thing about my podcast is that it does not age. You can go back two, three years.
and the episodes will still be important to you. So there’s like this massive library, this huge archive of things for you to learn about job searching, about career planning and development, about leadership. yeah, so I’m gonna let ⁓ the ads do the work, but I would love to see you in the holiday job search sprint. I think the more the merrier. It’s not gonna be a big group.
I’m assuming 15 would be a great number, maybe 20. 20 would be a dream. So make it happen, everybody. Come and work with me. I think we’re going to have a great time. All right. I’ll let you be and I’ll join my husband for dinner. And it’s lovely to see you again. If you’re still here and you’re not subscribed, why not? Please subscribe. Subscribe to the newsletter as well. There’s content there that I do not post anywhere else.
There’s not a single week that I don’t send that newsletter out that I don’t get people coming back to me and saying, thank you. So really makes my day, you know, the fact that I put that work into creating special exclusive tips for the newsletter that people value and give feedback on. So if you have any feedback, if you’re a newsletter subscriber and you have feedback, just reply back. I read the emails. I get everything.
All right, everybody. Bye for now. I’ll see you next time. Bye.
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