ILMA Compoundings June 2018 - 30

Essential "soft skills," including
characteristics like self-confidence and
patience, come with years of experience.
This gives older prospective employees a
distinct advantage over younger hires.
"Oftentimes, younger people tend
to be anxious to close the deal and
get to the end, so that they can get
on to the next piece of business,"
Novak explained. "You realize once
you've been there that it takes time to
get everyone on board to create the
mindset for moving forward."
The development of those soft skills
allows older talent to help others
around them, even people in different
departments or with different organizations entirely. For example, Novak
often gets calls asking if she knows
someone who could fit in this position
or that one, or whether she knows
anyone who has a skill set that her
employer could utilize.
"For me, it's more about how you fit
with other people and your personality
traits - especially as you go higher
in an organization," explained Breitigam. "I've done a lot of self-study on
emotional intelligence, and I've come
a long way myself from even five or 10
years ago. The natural maturing process
helps, and if you do a little self-study,
it will go a long way toward furthering
your career. You've got to be self-aware."

How Would the
Interview Go?
The self-assuredness that seasoned
employees bring to their jobs is also a
benefit during interviews, and that can
really help older talent when interviewing - an experience some older
job candidates haven't had in long
while. "It has more to do with my
sense of self-confidence," said Novak,
"because I have different skill sets that
I bring to the table that someone else
may not have, simply because of my
longevity in the industry."

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| COMPOUNDINGS | ILMA.ORG

"Getting the interview isn't
difficult - it's finding the right
match with the right company," said
Breitigam. "A lot of the questions
for [my current] position were more
strategy-related, not so tactical. But it's
also about how you build relationships
and come together with others in an
organization."
Since seasoned employees have a
wealth of experience to draw from,
interviews tend to follow a pattern.
Education and work experience are
generally already outlined in the
résumé, so questions surrounding one's
fit are of more concern to employers.
Breitigam and Novak believe interviewers today are more interested in
how prospective employees will fit into
an organization - how employees go
about affecting change - than they
were 10 or 15 years ago.
In Novak's recent interviews with
Palmer Holland, questions focused
more on her accomplishments and
skills than her formal education.
"Education was important because it
was something that got me to where
I am, but now, the focus is on what
kind of customers I've dealt with;
what kind of problems I've had to

solve; what my responsibilities in
other positions were," she said. "There
was a strong emphasis on my outside
activities - what did I do from a
volunteer perspective, what trade
associations did I belong to and how
did I contribute to those things?"

Does Technology
Present a Hurdle?
Seasoned employees might have entered
the workforce before the computer
boom of the 1990s, but that doesn't
mean that technology presents a hurdle
for them. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
"In the real world," Kielts at Palmer
Holland explained, "when an older
employee is working alongside millennials, there is never an absence of
people who can coach them through
[the technology]. It's more of a perceived issue than a real issue."
Older employees often find that their
experience in the days before computers were part of the industry provides
a beneficial perspective. "It's like when
kids are learning math," Novak mentioned, "and they always want to grab
that calculator. There's a reason we learn
to do it with pencil and paper - so
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