40Plus welcomes March 17 speaker Gordan Silcox

40Plus of Greater Washington welcomes Gordan Silcox to speak at our March 17 Monday Morning Meeting.  Mr. Silcox, principal, Words on Purpose, LLC, will discuss the interview process and gearing your presentation to convince the employer to choose you for the job. 

Monday morning professional networking meetings are free and open to the public.

Personal Branding Tips

For those who couldn’t attend yesterday’s meeting on personal branding, speaker Robert Moment provided a copy of his handout to share with others.  See: personal_branding_speaking_handouts_rmoment.doc, which includes some tips about developing your resume as well as useful links to websites for marketing your brand. 

40Plus welcomes Feb. 18 speaker Marshall Brown

40Plus of Greater Washington welcomes Marshall Brown to speak at our Feb. 18 Monday Morning Meeting. His topic: Writing a Powerful Resume.

What is considered an effective and powerful resume? One that attracts the attention of hiring authorites, showcases your relevant work background, demonstrates you have the right qualifications for the job, and demonstrates how you can benefit an organization.

Join Marshall as he reviews how to identify keywork expertise and experiences and bundle them together to develop a resume projecting your unique professional niche.

Monday morning meetings are free and open to the public.

Encore Careers

Earlier this week, I recommended reading  “No Country for Old People?” by Civic Ventures chief executive Marc Freedman. Published in the Outlook section of the Washington Post, the article draws from ideas explored in Freedman’s book “Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life.”  Freedman introduces ideas I believe are important for every 40Plus member to consider as they explore mid-life career transitions. In the extended excerpt below from the book’s website, Freedman imagines a possible scenario for working seniors in the year 2030:

“The boomers are indeed starting to leave the stage. But their encore has been a rousing one and the legacy they leave is far different.

The hysterical predictions of academic economists and assorted policy experts that once dominated discussion about the inevitable demographic trends have proven false. Few even remember concerns that the nation was headed to hell in a handbasket because of the huge population of “retiring” boomers. The feared “Gray2K” was a nonevent, just like Y2K before it.

Instead, there is a palpable sense of progress. Longevity, demography, human development, generational experience, fiscal imperatives, labor market dictates, and the particular historical moment combined to lead boomers to contribute longer and to use their education and experience in areas with jobs to offer, deeper meaning to confer, and broader social purposes to fulfill.

Faced with the practical necessity of extended working lives, boomers have made it a virtue, getting busy on their next chapters, second acts, or Careers 2.0. Some of the ills that seemed intractable at the beginning of the twenty-first century are fading, and others that appeared only to be worsening have made a 180° turn—all thanks to boomer labor power, now known as the “experience dividend.”

Now, nearly everyone looks forward to an encore career. The oldest members of the millennial generation, entering their fifties, are getting ready for their own second acts, and younger people clamor for “purpose-driven jobs” in the same way earlier generations embraced early retirement. The goal now is to be able to stop climbing the ladder and start making a difference, to trade money for meaning, to have the latitude to work on things that matter most.”

Sounds exciting — sign me up! What do you think?