Queenager Careers: Need a job? Forget LinkedIn and online sites - try this!
Our Noon Jobs Board, with 55 Redefined, has jobs from employers who are actively seeking Queenagers.. including BT where I just moderated a Future of Work panel
Dear Queenagers
Welcome to our monthly Queenager careers newsletter - designed to help women just like you get back into a job… we know gendered ageism is real so we are here to help!
Are you a Queenager looking for a new job or trying to get back into employment after a break – maybe because you’ve been caring for a loved one? If that’s you I just want you to take a second to read this post because it is hard out there. Gendered Ageism is real in the jobs market. (As my interview with Anneliese Dodds MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities proves you can read it here if you missed it).
Eleanor's Letter: It's official, Queenagers are worth a staggering £7billion to UK Plc
Dear Queenagers Well I’ve been racing around this week - including spending two nights up in Manchester. Now I’ll be honest (sorry Northerners) until now, every time I’ve been up to Manchester to see my daughter, who is at Uni there, it has been wet, bleak and somewhat unprepocessing. Yes, I haven’t loved it. But this time all that changed. It was as if the city was an oyster, rough and dark and gnarly on the outside and this time - in the sunshine hanging out in Whitworth Park which looked like Paris in an Impressionist painting -Manchester finally showed me its pearly centre. The people are so fun and friendly and dressed to the nines, Gay village on the canal was eye-popping (an actual naked hairy bottom outside a bar at 9pm at night) and I had the best spaghetti vongole I’ve ever eaten (other than in Naples) at a fab restaurant in the Northern Quarter called Sicilian NQ. I was definitely the oldest swinger in town; the average age is about 23. But I decided just to pretend I was 20…
Anyway, Anneliese Dodds MP told me that the Gender Pay gap for women in their 50s and 60s is four times worse than for women in their 30s; the CEO of SmartWorks, a charity which helps women get back to work, explained that their data shows it takes women over 50 over twice as long to find a job. Getting Queenagers back to work would add £7billion to UK PLC which is why Labour are interested in helping us!
These aren’t just statistics. At the NOON Circles I run – support groups for Queenagers going through the midlife collision – it breaks my heart to hear the women’s stories. Just yesterday I sat listening to a distinguished Queenager in her early 50s. Before she cut back on her work to raise her kids she had been a banker at a premier firm with qualifications from a top university and an MBA. In the last few years she has run a Food Bank, set up a charity and is now looking to return to full time work. “I sent off an application for a job where I was ridiculously over qualified, I thought I would start low. I spent hours on it, I even got a friend who is the CEO of a similar company to look it over for me. He was sure I woud be a top candidate…. I didn’t even get an interview.” I explained that her carefully crafted letter and CV probably never made it through the algorithm. That I had applied for loads of jobs online myself and never got a single interview or anything other than a generic automated response (on one a headhunter called me asking if I was interested in the very same job and said I would have been knocked out by the algorithm because I was over 50). Other women told similar tales – of applying through Linkedin or job sites and getting nowhere. And with every rejection their already flagging confidence sagged further.
This is a tragedy not just for these individual women but for UK PLC. The 185000 women 50 plus who left the work force during COVID and can’t get back are removing £7billion from annual GDP. Many of these Queenagers WANT to work and have essential skills – when it comes to managing complex change no-one does it better than a midlife woman. We’re also faced with a huge talent shortage of 2.5million workers by 2030. So why aren’t employers waking up to the gendered ageism which is stopping them recruiting brilliant older female workers?
Well some of them are. At my platform noon.org.uk we run a Jobs Board with our partners 55 Redefined which features jobs from employers actively seeking Queenagers. Like a bank which wants older workers who know what it is like to trade in an era of higher interest rates. But because only 16% of over 50s are active on LinkedIn, and a very low number of over-50s are on mainstream jobs boards (and the ones that are aren’t getting anywhere) even companies which want older workers can’t always find them. The current system is broken which is why we’ve set up our NOON Jobs Board and I am sending out this newsletter to fill that gap.
Our jobs board is the missing link between age inclusive companies and the experienced midlife workforce. The companies listed have to do more than a box-ticking exercise to become an age-inclusive employer.
There's no recruitment agencies, no fake jobs, no bias.
This is not LinkedIn. Listings only feature roles with age inclusive employers, which means you are applying direct to the age accredited company. You won't be asked click 'easy apply' and feel like you're shouting into the void, before being ghosted.
What jobs are we talking about?
Well right now we have companies looking for everything from pension specialists, insurance claims consultants to nuclear engineers, media roles, fraud specialists and everything in between.
Such as: AWE (Atomic Weapons Establishment)- while definitely not your standard employer, has 66 vacancies today and is keen to receive applications from our over 50s engineering and tech community. HERE
Global ad agency dentsu: 88 job roles
Media and TV company ITV: 18 vacancies
Global consultancy Capgemini: 12 opportunities
Lawyers Osborne Clarke: 17 jobs in Bristol
Telecoms giant EE part of BT: 65 jobs nationwide
Or scan through the list HERE, and if a company you would like to work for is listed, why not reach out with your credentials, even if the perfect job isn't yet listed?
Definitely more productive than hitting easy apply on LinkedIn.
Good luck and do tell us how you get on!
Eleanor