Returning To Work In Your 50s

Our generation is working and living longer. We don’t plan to retire at the traditional age, either by choice or out of necessity and guess what? Most of the time we are overqualified or overeducated for our jobs.

Data published last April by the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that a record number of 35-49-year-olds is overqualified for their jobs, with 18.9% of this age group are now considered to be “overeducated” for their current jobs. But still, more and more professionals are happy to start over again in a second career voluntarily put themselves at the bottom of the ladder in an entirely new profession. Maybe learning new skills and giving something back is actually the reason beyond the statistics. Recruitment experts and sociologists believe this is a result of the increasing trend for this age-group to “challenge themselves in a different career sector”.

Mid-life professional women, in particular, are more likely to restart or shift a career: job satisfaction and repurpose in life are probably the key factors. Women so frequently turn the heat up and down on their careers because they move laterally, and back and forth between work and home, juggling the pressures of childcare and ageing parents; because they work efficiently but not necessarily during “working hours”. For all of these reasons, they have in some way already adapted to the new way of doing business making them a very good candidate.

The most important step when beginning the return-to-work journey, especially after a break, according to Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO and Founder of iRelaunch (the pioneering company in the career reentry space) is to figure out exactly what you want to do. Do you want to return to what you were doing before, or have you developed other interests during your career break? Perhaps your life has changed, and you simply can’t go back to doing what you were doing before. Chances are things have changed in your industry, too. Take the time to reflect on your life, goals and former field before charging forward.