The 40 Year Old Graduate...

ThePantyChrist

Well, I'm actually closer to 38 going on 39, but you get the idea.

So, I recently completed a HDip after returning to college last year, and I was delighted with myself that I achieved a First. Quite the big deal for me, as historically I have been anything but academic.

So, here's my problem. Most employers don't seem to give a hoot about a graduate unless they are applying for a graduate program. But I am very reluctant to apply for these programs as they all seem to be geared towards the early 20s crowd in terms of what's on offer and work/life balance, etc... The thought of being the "old guy" amongst a group of 20 somethings sends a shiver down my spine.

I have been finding it difficult to even get a response to job applications. The careers counsellor from college says that my CV is "excellent", so I'm not sure where I'm going wrong. I worked for a big tech company for over 10 years (mostly in various levels of IT), before being made redundant in 2012, at which point I started my own business in a creative field. The business has done okayish, but I have a wife and young child now and need a more stable income, hence why I went back to college.

I'm starting to feel like employers don't like that I have my own business, even though my CV/cover letters explicitly state that I am seeking a career change.

Has anyone else been through this and come out the other side? Has anyone around the same age gone down the graduate program route and survived?

siblers

What field is the Hdip in? What type of role are you looking for? Have you experience in that role or experience related to the role?

ThePantyChrist

siblers wrote: »

What field is the Hdip in? What type of role are you looking for? Have you experience in that role?

Data Analytics (Statistics, Machine Learning, etc...).

I'm mostly interested in the data mining/machine learning side of things. No direct experience other than the projects I did while studying, but some of my previous IT experience overlaps with a lot of the competencies, and I did use SQL quite a bit back then, which is a skill that shows up a lot in relevant job postings. Although I am probably a little rusty using it these days.

OMM 0000

It makes no sense you can't get a job. There is tons of work for data science people, especially with your long IT background.

Are you writing a unique cover letter for each job? Has someone checked your CV for problems?

Perhaps you could do a few machine learning jobs on Freelancer just to get a bit of data science experience on your CV.

I actually have a small job I need done, I can't pay you but if you want to do it you can use me as a reference (CTO in tech company in Asia).

TrustedApple

Machine Learning send me a pm as well my company are also looking for people in that area I think.

ThumbTaxed

I know a lot of 40 year old who can barely tie their shoe laces. Have you tried public sector? See previous sentence

irishgrover

Data analysis, IT, big data, machine learning. Process automation etc etc....sounds like a very good segue into the wet dream of an insurance IT dept (no insult meant with crass analogy)

engiweirdo

Not quite 40, 34 year old grad here and in more or less the same situ. Feel like was sold a lie tbh and wasted 4 years working hard for nowt. There is no second chance in Ireland, companies only want shiny new 22 year olds. Follow the blueprint or f off and do min wage work. The recovery is not for us.

AllForIt

ThePantyChrist wrote: »

I'm starting to feel like employers don't like that I have my own business, even though my CV/cover letters explicitly state that I am seeking a career change.

Defiantly. The type of person they would be looking for is someone who is happy to spend as much time as possible in front of your computer even at home learning new things. You would not fit the bill if you have 'distractions'.

beauf

They want graduates because they can pay them less. By shortage they mean there's no one who will do these jobs for peanuts. So let's outsource them.

Always wary of these claimed IT shortages. It doesn't seem to pay like a trademans wage in a true shortage.

beauf

To the op you might be better going contact. She is less an issue, and experience will be more valued.

henryforde80

Sorry OP but you need to grow up here.

Apply for graduate roles and get your foot in the door. There is plenty of people your age working in graduate roles. Your not going to get a high paying job in analytics without experience and going to find it tough getting a job. Do you think graduate roles are beneath you or something?

You also have ten years experience in I.T. Did you not like working in I.T as can't see Data analytics been too much different, just another form of it.

It is 100% the same for most college graduates, getting the first job is the most difficult, after this with experience it becomes much easier.

NightStone

All I seem to hear is work force shortage followed by there is plenty of jobs especially IT .
CV harvesting still continues.
Absolutely clueless recruitment and HR continues.
The search for the low paid graduate who lives with his/her parents and doesn't be concerned about rent therefore will just be happy to get the wages and expierence.

It's worrying .

henryforde80

NightStone wrote: »

All I seem to hear is work force shortage followed by there is plenty of jobs especially IT .
CV harvesting still continues.
Absolutely clueless recruitment and HR continues.
The search for the low paid graduate who lives with his/her parents and doesn't be concerned about rent therefore will just be happy to get the wages and expierence.

It's worrying .

You can't expect to be earning 40K right out of college.

Its a graft for everyone to get the experience for the first two or three years after college. Its then much easier to swap jobs for more money.

Triceratops Ballet

Op are there any networking events you can get out to where you can meet with hiring managers or internal recruiters. I do recruitment internally in a tech company and we get a few applications like yours.
what we typically do when we meet someone like that with a wealth of experience in one field who has diversified into another area is meet with them along with some dept heads, and see if there's anything we can fit them into, maybe a role we have coming down the line that isn't open yet.

It seems silly to me to try fit someone like that into a standard grad role, but it only works if you're willing to leverage your previous experience and get out and meet people, go to college career days, meet ups etc those things are crawling with recruiters, talk to internal recruiters if you can rather than agencies as internal recruiters are playing the long game rather than chasing their next commission

titan18

I work in data analytics and a hdip (assuming this was just a one year course that touched upon several things but nothing in depth) wouldn't really convince me to hire someone in this field for anything more than a graduate or junior role.

Unless you're going into a graduate role, I think you're best off applying for reporting analyst or junior BI roles and once you've got a year or two experience there, see can you move on, as a lot of what you'll do there can give you a basis for a career in data analytics.

Data science will be trickier, and from what I've seen most companies are looking for people with a lot of experience there so I think a grad role might be your only opportunity there.

ThePantyChrist

Many thanks for everyone that responded.

OMM 0000 wrote: »

It makes no sense you can't get a job. There is tons of work for data science people, especially with your long IT background.

Are you writing a unique cover letter for each job? Has someone checked your CV for problems?

Perhaps you could do a few machine learning jobs on Freelancer just to get a bit of data science experience on your CV.

I actually have a small job I need done, I can't pay you but if you want to do it you can use me as a reference (CTO in tech company in Asia).

Yeah, I'm doing all of that. I research the company beforehand and try to work their "culture" and "values" into the cover letter. I also take the key points from the job description and try to fit them into my CV in a relevant way.

Feel free to PM me about the job you need done. I'd be happy to help if I can.

TrustedApple wrote: »

Machine Learning send me a pm as well my company are also looking for people in that area I think.

Thanks, I will do.

engiweirdo wrote: »

Not quite 40, 34 year old grad here and in more or less the same situ. Feel like was sold a lie tbh and wasted 4 years working hard for nowt. There is no second chance in Ireland, companies only want shiny new 22 year olds. Follow the blueprint or f off and do min wage work. The recovery is not for us.

Yeah, I'm trying to stay positive about it all, but I do have similar thoughts from time to time. I have a friend in recruitment that told me older graduates can't be moulded into the company men/women that some places want, so they will often be overlooked.

henryforde80 wrote: »

You can't expect to be earning 40K right out of college.

Its a graft for everyone to get the experience for the first two or three years after college. Its then much easier to swap jobs for more money.

I don't. I would be willing to take the hit and return to the €30k salary that most graduate roles offer to get my foot in the door if necessary.

henryforde80 wrote: »

Sorry OP but you need to grow up here.

Apply for graduate roles and get your foot in the door. There is plenty of people your age working in graduate roles. Your not going to get a high paying job in analytics without experience and going to find it tough getting a job. Do you think graduate roles are beneath you or something?

You also have ten years experience in I.T. Did you not like working in I.T as can't see Data analytics been too much different, just another form of it.

It is 100% the same for most college graduates, getting the first job is the most difficult, after this with experience it becomes much easier.

See above. I'm not expecting a high paying job. I will take the hit in salary. I'm lucky as my wife earns a decent salary, so we can make this short-term sacrifice in the hope of long-term gains. I have started at rock bottom before and I can do it again if I have to.

My issues with the graduate programs are that they do not appear to be geared towards married men in their 40s with kids. If someone knows otherwise, I would love to hear of their experience, as I cannot find anyone my age that has been through a graduate program.

Despite my feelings, I have actually applied for some graduate roles/programs and I either received no response at all or was told that I did not fit the profile. Whenever I ask for feedback on this it's radio silence.

One place said that my CV and experience was very impressive, but I wasn't suitable for the role. The job description looked like it could have been copied and pasted from a description of my college course, which I got a first in, and I still wasn't suitable???

And yes, I did like IT. Quite a bit actually. But I was made redundant in 2012 when no one was hiring, so I got creative and turned a hobby into a business to try to tide me over. And I believe that this may be a part of the problem. My IT experience ended a little over 6 years ago, and I have worked in a completely unrelated field since then.

agent_88

Fair play to you for setting up your own business and going back to college.

I work in a large tech company and while the majority of those on our graduate programme fit the standard profile - 20s just out of college, there are a few outside of this, including older who have changed careers, so don’t rule them out.

Don’t be too reliant on the CV with the silent responses as others mentioned look into networking events (meetup is a great way to target specific areas of interest. Also if you haven't already done it set up a comprehensive LinkedIn profile and and contact hiring managers directly.

By the sounds of your background and experience in IT, own business and your recent course a role as a Pre sales / sale consultant would be a good fit. Look at companies that sell the products you have a high level knowledge of and they can train you up on their product specific stuff.

Best of luck with the search.

ArnieSilvia

I can't help you with IT side of things other than to say keep trying.

I was in your shoes 2 years ago. I had to leave job (shift work destroyed me) and try something else.

I tumbled from biotech factory work to engineering, then sales manager role and unemployment in space of 6 months.

It took me 5 months to find another (temporary) job but this changed the vicous circle.

The problem was the sales role as my last job

Once I wiped out the sales role from my CV all doors opened for me.

What I learned was that people involved in engineering (IT in extension) can't or won't do the sales/business and hate with passion anybody who does. Sounds like a huge sweeping statement but I'm talking from personal experience here.

So my advice would be to replace your business in the CV with something else you also did over those years (studying).

DO NOT mention creativity or that you had some business ideas in the CV, I thought it is good - it isn't. From my experience you might be considered a potential squeaky wheel with your ideas. Many managers don't like it.

Finally, in total contradiction to what I said before, after all these hurdles I ended up working for someone who accepted me the way I am, saw my potential and allowed me to spread my wings to develop in my role. He hired me to do something engineering/IT related that others wouldn't do just because I had a business mindset and others didn't. I had to do a lot of sacrifice for this role but it was worth it.

Good luck!

Midlife crisis man

I feel your pain OP. I am in the exact same boat. I'm also one of those poor victims of timing and circumstance and the dread recession. I just finished college with a first class honours degree and can't get my foot in the door anywhere. The market is definitely ageist against mature grads and I take offence to this. To give an example; I spent 20 minutes in one interview pretty much arguing about my leaving cert results. Not only could I not remember my points, I could barely remember what subjects I sat. It didn't matter that I have 2 degrees to my name and a whole bunch of work experience, for some reason they NEEDED to know these results and wouldn't budge. Things like this seem to be the recurring theme

Surely you and I aren't the only people to ever make a career change in our respective fields. if anything, our dedication and drive to get to this stage while at the same time working a job and raising a family should stand more to the likes of us. We know what we want from life and our careers and firms should be clambering to take on mature grads over fresh grads with no life experience.

I was told by a guy in HR that firms don't want to hire mature grads because fresh college leavers "will work for **** money, will be worked all the hours under the sun, can be moulded into whatever the firm wants, and don't have experience of being able to stand up for themselves and say 'no'. "

The only thing I can say is to keep applying. The Law of Averages says that the right one for us will come along eventually. I've been applying for roles related to my degree for 12 months now. Its pretty tough, especially when some local firms are only offering as little as 17k a year. There'll always be somebody who will accept that salary in their first job.

Best of luck with it OP

beauf

I think you need to dumb down your CV if you have a lot of experience in different areas/industries.
HR and agencies seem to get confused with varied experience.
I've definitely had better response to a simplified CV where I leave off different things.

ThePantyChrist

beauf wrote: »

I think you need to dumb down your CV if you have a lot of experience in different areas/industries.
HR and agencies seem to get confused with varied experience.
I've definitely had better response to a simplified CV where I leave off different things.

I wouldn't say that I have a lot of variation in my experience. I have about 13 years working with computers and various levels of IT for the same organisation. Then from 2012 to now, I have run my own business in a creative field. This is the only variation really. I can't see how eliminating that from my CV and creating a 6-year gap would be helpful, but I am open to being corrected on this.

I'm starting to think that I need some expert advice on my CV (I would appreciate any recommendations anyone may have on this). The careers advisor from college only ever seems to give me glowing feedback, so I think that she's just blowing smoke up my ass and hoping I'll go away and just apply for a grad program.

I think I may also be a victim of bad timing. I started the course last September, and our baby was born last October. Right when I would have had to apply for this year's grad programs. As it was an accelerated 1 year course, I didn't know what grade I was on track for back then, I had barely gotten started with the course (I actually didn't do all that well in my first few assessments), and the shock that a new baby brings didn't allow time for much else. Applying now would mean I would have to wait until September 2019 to start work, which isn't really an option. I have been trying to find grad programs that start in January, but no luck there.

Midlife crisis man

Hi OP. Have a look at the information in this thread for an AO in the public sector :

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057913020

One of the areas they are looking for people in, is Data Analytics/Statistics and its for a January '19 start. I've just filled out the form there for the Taxation and Accounting streams

ThePantyChrist

Midlife crisis man wrote: »

Hi OP. Have a look at the information in this thread for an AO in the public sector :

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057913020

One of the areas they are looking for people in, is Data Analytics/Statistics and its for a January '19 start. I've just filled out the form there for the Taxation and Accounting streams

Thanks. Sounds interesting, I'm going to have a look at this tonight.

Doop

I agree with some of the sentiments above you really need to minimize the irrelevant parts of your CV ie running your own business in a creative field...
I know this will create a gap but it might be better to say this work was to tide you over while studying and keep jumping back to the relevant experience you have.. is talk your way out of it when you do get into the interview.

john343

Im in the middle of my level 8 IT degree, seriously thinking of jacking it...ill be 39 finishing it and having little experience in IT previously im not confident in being able to get a job after having hearing and reading many stories of the difficulties mature graduates face in getting a job....

OMM 0000

john343 wrote: »

Im in the middle of my level 8 IT degree, seriously thinking of jacking it...ill be 39 finishing it and having little experience in IT previously im not confident in being able to get a job after having hearing and reading many stories of the difficulties mature graduates face in getting a job....

You'll definitely be able to get a job.

But it sounds like you don't enjoy it?

john343

OMM 0000 wrote: »

You'll definitely be able to get a job.

But it sounds like you don't enjoy it?

Its a great course but the financial implications are very hard, id hate to be in a position of not being able to get a job after the sacrifices been made...

engiweirdo

john343 wrote: »

Im in the middle of my level 8 IT degree, seriously thinking of jacking it...ill be 39 finishing it and having little experience in IT previously im not confident in being able to get a job after having hearing and reading many stories of the difficulties mature graduates face in getting a job....

Finish the degree anyway. Sure you're stuck worse if you jump out in the middle of it.

john343

engiweirdo wrote: »

Finish the degree anyway. Sure you're stuck worse if you jump out in the middle of it.

True, back to square one!

OMM 0000

There's no chance you won't be able to get a job.

Honestly I don't understand your negativity.

Why don't you build a full-stack application in your spare time? Node + Express + Vue + MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Also do some small jobs on Freelancer.com.

Don't enter your job hunt with nothing to show for yourself.

bobbysands81

ThumbTaxed wrote: »

I know a lot of 40 year old who can barely tie their shoe laces. Have you tried public sector? See previous sentence

It’s really strange that you’re up against all these folk “who can barely tie their shoe laces” in promotions in the CS... yet somehow you’re not getting promoted.

john343

OMM 0000 wrote: »

There's no chance you won't be able to get a job.

Honestly I don't understand your negativity.

Why don't you build a full-stack application in your spare time? Node + Express + Vue + MySQL or PostgreSQL.

Also do some small jobs on Freelancer.com.

Don't enter your job hunt with nothing to show for yourself.

Great advice "OMM 0000"

I actually enjoy web dev, have built a few sites so far for people in my own network and I have been trying upwork etc but its a tough nut to crack. I want to prospect local but im bricking it to reach out to people cold.

Definitely intend on learning full stack dev and start completing projects. Ive downloaded a few lynda courses to start learning vanilla javascript, full-stack with react & node etc etc so gonna get cracking on them and start adding to the github account etc...

Big Eejit

I did a H Dip in cloud computing, at 43. Walked straight into a job - and I had spent the previous four or so years ‘lost’, from a careers perspective, having returned to the aul’ sod after a long time in the ex-pat engineering world.

Roll on three years or so: Left that job after being overloaded with work, routinely hounded by managers, working in high staff turnover, tech support area (Stressed up to the eyeballs). Plenty of older guys, nany qualified in other areas (ex-trades, graduates from non-tech areas). Great money, but careful what wish for

Tune your CV, I’d suggest - and network; Referrals will get you an interview