Career Confidence Midlife: Real Stories of Transition and Growth

Building Career Confidence Midlife: A Personal Journey

I worked with a middle-aged man this year who had a few gaps in his CV for a variety of reasons. He'd been at home with family for a few years and had held senior positions for several years principally in IT and the Services Industries and now faced with the combination of years passing and a desire to get back he wasn't quite sure what to do.

Acknowledging your own abilities can be difficult

He had engaged a variety of services from INTREO to reading up on various motivational and career books, and coaches but was still none the wiser despite best efforts. A combination of location and feeling the passage of time were to the forefront of his mind. Not everyone lives in Cork, Dublin or Cork City, or even big towns like Portlaoise or Naas for example, so access on the motorways to business zones isn't always straightforward. He'd submitted his CV, not got the job, or sometimes not even got to the interview.

Well-intentioned family members were encouraging and supportive but like everything else once we talk about the same subject sometimes the spirit can be interpreted as negative or dull by the listener. So not much use really for a guy who felt stuck or lost and that can be a lonely enough place. He had lost touch with former colleagues that he had worked closely with in the past.

Friends or family though well-intentioned may not help you uncover what you need to know

After what must have felt like an eternity, he had found himself overlooking key features of his career — a common experience when career confidence midlife begins to wane.

So what course of action did he decided to take to get back on his feet?:

• Be realistic about his career and reflect on his many achievements

• Re-learn how to articulate them in his own style

• Recognize that there is still a skills shortage in the country

• Learning about how to write a CV that is a verbal account of who he is.

• There are set-backs, but there is a time to be resilient too.

• The SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) sector is a vibrant and critical part of business in Ireland, the corporates are a fantastic addition to Ireland in pharma, IT, food and so on, but the SME sector is just as vibrant.

• The importance of his network - to stay in touch even if it has been a few years.

Now he is at the point of creating a plan and maybe taking some new motivation and direction. Rebuilding career confidence midlife takes time, but with clarity and support, it’s absolutely possible.