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One man’s retirement crusade to help Detroit and baby boomers
Randal Charlton has had a long, colorful career with plenty of ups and downs. In his 71 years, he’s done everything from tending dairy cows for a Saudi sheik to starting a jazz club in Florida. And as a lifelong entrepreneur, he has bought and sold 14 different companies.
Charlton’s last venture was a Detroit-based biotech company called Asterand, which he co-founded and then merged in 2006 with a U.K.-based competitor. He was 67 years old after the deal closed – a time when many would hang up their spikes and take it easy.
Instead, Charlton took on a daunting new challenge: fighting Motor City’s economic blight by building a successful business incubator for entrepreneurs called TechTown. Charlton raised $24 million from foundations and government, gathered together an impressive array of resources for training and start-up funding and recruited a small army of start-ups that have created a total of more than 1,800 local jobs.
TechTown is located in an old five-floor automotive plant with 130,000 square feet. When Charlton took over, just one floor was built out, and the center was running on loans guaranteed by nearby Wayne State University. Since then, the incubator has been home to 250 companies, and more than 2,200 entrepreneurs have graduated from its training programs. Last year, 14 TechTown companies received capital infusions totaling more than $1.35 million. The incubator has invested $700,000 directly in early-stage businesses and helped clients raise $14 million in follow-on funding.
Charlton’s work has just been recognized with a 2011 Purpose Prize, announced today. The award, given annually by the Encore Careers campaign, recognizes older career trailblazers who have demonstrated creative and effective work tackling social problems. Now in its sixth year, the prize was created to promote and encourage civic engagement among baby boomers. It’s a program of Civic Ventures, a nonprofit that works to engage boomers in encore careers combining personal meaning, income and social impact.
Each prize winner receives $100,000. The other winners this year include a San Francisco-area screenwriter who adopted two daughters from China in her fifties, then found a way to partner with the Chinese government in efforts to transform the care of 800,000 orphans there; an Oregon woman who produces and distributes low-cost, safe, fuel-efficient cookstoves in Latin America; and a Santa Fe, New Mexico architect working to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions in buildings.
A native of England, Charlton started his career after college as an agriculture journalist, and then worked for an agricultural export company. His work has taken him to 40 countries and many adventures, including living for weeks in a Saudi Arabian desert nursing a sheik’s herd of cows back to health. Later he acted as a consultant for cattle breeding associations and for the European Development Fund, and as an executive for several global biotechnology companies.
Gen Y out of work: What is corporate America doing about it?
Highly educated, sometimes entitled and incredibly humbled by the current labor market, Generation Y is hungry for work. But do employers understand this enormous and grossly underemployed demographic?
Nearly eighty million strong, Gen Y is loosely defined as those born between 1980 and 1994 (or 2005 depending on who you talk to). Raised in a kid-centric time, many continue to be coddled by helicopter parents not willing to wean their precious lot from the proverbial financial teat. As a result, Gen Y’s expectations of the workforce are vastly different from baby boomers and even the closely-related Generation X.
“When they get to the workplace, they have a sense of entitlement, a need for validation, difficulty in really discerning what to do because their whole lives were managed,” says Christine Hassler, a Gen Y career expert and consultant to American Express on Millennials. “They have challenges with making decisions and have expectations of work-life balance. They want their opinion to matter and [want to work] for a company that is really making a difference.”
Major employers are struggling to understand this often fickle demographic, choosing instead to focus on candidates familiar with the corporate structure. And in this fragile economy, a new employee who can hit the ground running is an asset. ”I’m seeing a lot of corporations saying they know they need to engage Gen Y and hire young employers because it costs less, but they don’t want to take the risk of hiring someone without work experience,” says Hassler.
Corporate America is also waiting for this demographic to conform to the old playbook, something completely foreign to Generation Y, says Garrison Wynn, CEO of career management website Wynn Solutions and author of “The Real Truth About Success.” They were told they could have everything they wanted and could be whatever they wanted to be. ”They’ve come to collect on that,” Wynn says. “That’s what they expect. So, when they get in a job interview and it looks like the path isn’t going to be good enough or fast enough, then they’re not interested.”
Volatility in global markets, weak domestic growth and persistent economic concerns in Europe are also complicating an organization’s willingness to expand, despite high corporate profits. “The pain of downsizing and the destruction of the organization is so difficult that companies are playing it safe,” says Jackie Greaner, North America practice leader, talent management and organization alignment for Towers Watson. “It’s hard in this type of market, where it goes up and down to such a degree; it leaves everyone feeling less than confident about the state of the economy.”
As a Gen Y’er, I will say that I was raised to feel as though I was always a winner. I was far from spoiled though. With my own mother and myself living on the streets as a toddler, and working our way up, I learned a lot about what it means to EARN a living. I have worked hard and been in the workforce from the age of 15… until three years ago. I was laid off the day after I announce pregnancy at my job. I applied for 5+ jobs a week for two of the three years, and also launched a business to bring in money as much as possible. New businesses need money to survive and they need more attention than a new mother can give without being able to afford childcare. I launched another business, desperate to succeed. In this time, I went to several interviews. All employers seem genuinely interested in me, having me back for multiple interviews. But, in the end, I am always rejected. I have finally had to make a deadline for myself. If I do not have a job by the middle of this month, I will return to school for an MBA and hopefully more opportunities, despite losing the career that I hold passion for. This is not entitlement that put me in this place.
Eight ways older workers can enhance job security
Last week’s dismal unemployment report contained what looks like a glimmer of hope for older workers. The August jobless rate for workers over 55 was 6.6 percent – far below the 9.1 percent national average. The seasonally-adjusted jobless rate for older workers was down from 7 percent as recently as June, and it stands considerably below the 7.3 percent rate in August 2010.
But the August jobless numbers masks broader weakness in the job market for older Americans, because it measures only workers actively seeking employment. Many older workers have given up looking; only 1 percent of unemployed older workers are optimistic about finding jobs in the near future, while 30 percent say they are very pessimistic, according to recent research by Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work.
Older workers who do lose their jobs tend to remain jobless much longer than their younger counterparts – if they are able to find new work at all. And those who do find new work most often accept jobs with lower pay and less valuable benefits. So, to state the obvious: the best strategy for staying employed after age 50 is to keep the job you have, if at all possible.
Easier said than done, you say — and I agree. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to boost your odds of staying employed, argues Alan Sklover, an attorney who has represented or coached hundreds of older workers in employment cases over his 30-year career. He also coaches older workers facing firings, downsizings or layoff.
Sklover acknowledges that age discrimination is “rampant” in the workplace — but he also says it is “natural and normal,” even though it’s illegal, adding that “We all make judgments based on age, no matter what anyone says.”
That means it’s that much more important for older workers to “find ways to enhance job security by making yourself indispensable. We’re all wired to be sensitive to our own self-interest, and an employer’s self-interest is to ask, ‘Is this person helpful to me? Can they help me be successful?’ That is always where it starts.”
Sklover offers the following eight strategies for enhancing job security have worked well over the years for his older clients.
Nonsense. Try those suggestions e.g. in the restaurant industry. If you’re not able to do a 19 hours shift without a break or something to eat, then faster then you imagine you’re sidelined.
In all my work experience it’s not the older employees who have trouble coping with demanding work situations but the younger ones who cannot cope with older colleagues or integrate their suggestions. When incompetence and inexperience combine with pressure to cut cost and lower quality, it’s the older colleagues who are made to leave first.
Important is not that older employees try to accommodate to changing work conditions — they did this their whole career, and succeeded — but that young employees learn to incorporate and put into use a variety of expertise and perspectives. Most of them are not good at that, and the older colleagues pay the prize.
So the only answer a 50+ year old job seeker should give when asked how he thinks he fits into the team is this: “Is your team able to integrate and put to use my experience, or is it so streamlined that everything I offer will be dismissed as a source of trouble? Are you smart enough not to make me a scapegoat for what will show up as your onesidedness?” Of course, they are not, and therefore no-one will answer thus.
Job creation: Fixing America with an infrastructure bank
We have iPhones, iPods and iPads. Why not an “iBank?”
This wouldn’t be an electronic gizmo that’s obsolete in a year, though. It would be a public-private partnership to bolster America’s infrastructure. It will create jobs, cut the deficit and repair what needs to be fixed all over the country.
An infrastructure bank, or iBank, solves a lot of problems without busting the budget. Instead of providing direct government grants or earmarks for specific projects, loans are made by a government-banking entity.
The U.S. is inexcusably late to the game on this time-tested idea. The European Investment Bank has financed some $350 billion in projects from 2005 through 2009. China spent 9 percent of its gross domestic product — also roughly $350 billion — to build subways, highways and high-speed rail in 2009 alone. Brazil invested $240 billion over the past three years.
The idea is not without high-level support. President Obama recently called for the creation of an iBank. In backing a U.S. iBank, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts testified last year that “a national infrastructure bank will make Americans builders again.”
If the iBank became reality — and really it’s a necessity to compete in a globalized economy — there’s no shortage of projects. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, more than $2 trillion is needed to fix U.S. bridges, dams, waterways and wastewater plants.
The sheer scale of a big fix is staggering: Some 69,000 bridges need to be repaired. The outdated electrical grid needs to be modernized everywhere. You can build solar plants and windmills all you want, but if you have no power lines to transport the electrons from the deserts and plains, you’re whistling in the wind.
An iBank is a public-private entity that would leverage government funds and private dollars from endowments, pension funds, etc. for infrastructure projects. The bank would be transparent, somewhat independent of the political process with its own trustees and operate in the public interest. Projects would be selected objectively and perhaps chosen for their expected utility and proximity to population centers.
Is the American Dream dead?
The American Dream lures people from all over the world, and it’s because of this possibility: If you come here and work hard, your kids will have a better life than you.
What if that weren’t true anymore?
Record debt, persistent joblessness, millions of underwater mortgages and a stock market that hasn’t gone anywhere in 10 years: For today’s kids who are entering the job market, it’s hardly a recipe for future success.
For parents who only want the best for their children, those prospects are like a wrenching pit in our stomachs. When such a central pillar of the American story is falling apart, frantic moms and dads hardly know what to think.
“My husband and I are terrified for our sons,” says Saideh Browne, a 40-year-old mom of two who heads up a speaker’s agency in New York City. “When they were born, we figured as long as we saved for college, they would be okay.
“But now, we can’t just tell them to go to school, get a good job, and retire at 65. We’ve had to rethink parenting, and it hasn’t been easy. We’re encouraging them to learn a trade, and hope it all works out before the economy tanks further.”
Browne is hardly alone in fretting about her children’s future. According to a new survey from Ipsos, sponsored by New York Life, only 41 percent of parents surveyed think that kids will have a better standard of living. It’s a major tectonic shift in our national belief system, but given the events of the past decade, it’s not that shocking.
WE have too much debt and the cost of living is so high! From 1980s to 2011 stealth inflation aka the cost of living has gone up like 600% and wages adjusted for inflation have been the same for the past 50 years. This is because we are the worlds reserve currency and we need to be indebt to create money for the rest of the worlds economy. Read about Triffins Dilemma and Bretton Woods this is the source of our problems.
Is the man-cession finally over?
Good news, lads: things are finally looking up on the job front.
After taking a beating in the labor market during the financial crisis — 5.2 million men saw their jobs evaporate between November 2007 and December 2009, compared to only 1.9 million for women — the tide is finally turning.
A new report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows that 1.7 million men have returned to the ranks of the employed since the beginning of last year, with 686,000 men finding work in the last 12 months alone.
“Men were hit disproportionately during the recession,” says John Challenger, chief executive officer. Indeed, some of the most gripping photos of the financial crisis showed hordes of men (and a handful of women) vacating their Manhattan offices following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 (see photo, left). “Now more of them are heading back to work, and I think in the next year we’ll see that continue.”
Mike Werch, marketing associate for job search site Indeed.com, crunched the numbers and found that male-dominated industries have seen the biggest jump in job postings in recent years.
Take transportation, for instance, which saw a 147 percent surge in job postings from December 2009 to December 2010, closely followed by manufacturing, which jumped by 90 percent in the same time period.
But the so-called “Man-covery“, as clever news outlets like to dub it, hasn’t been so kind to women. Employment among women has only grown by 365,000 since January 2010, with the number of employed women actually dropping by 85,000 in the last 12 months.
White males will be a minority within the next 15 years.
The deck will be stacked against them just as it was stacked against blacks, women, and other minorities in the past.
Deal with it…
Is college worth the investment?
Is a college education worth it? In the free market of ideas, maybe. In a labor market that can’t be sustained by wage growth or job creation, probably not. Another bubble may be bursting.
The college degree payback may be long and may not materialize for decades. A six-figure education may not be a guarantee to higher real wages in the near future and it may not be worth going into debt to finance it.
I’m not alone in this sentiment. A widespread public skepticism is fueled by poor short-term job prospects. It’s not surprising that 57 percent of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center said that higher education doesn’t provide a good value and 75 percent said it’s just too expensive for most people.
As young people attempt to enter the workforce and face an unemployment rate twice that of the majority of the general population, you have to take pause and examine what’s happened to create this bleak situation.
After World War Two, employment was plentiful. People who wanted a decent job in manufacturing or the white-collar sector could find one and stay there for 30 years. About one-third of private-sector workers were guaranteed union benefits, healthcare (even in retirement) and defined-benefit pensions. Productivity was on the rise and consumers drove the economy because they had plenty of disposable income and little debt.
That era, called the “Great Prosperity” by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, ended in roughly 1977. Over the past 30 years, collective bargaining, decent manufacturing jobs and guaranteed benefits began to disappear. I remember that time because I was just getting out of college in the middle of a nasty recession and took a low-paying job myself.
Because high-paying manufacturing jobs were offshored over the past generation, workforce preparation increasingly focused on services and the white-collar sector. While office-oriented employers mostly demanded workers have college degrees, there were no extra payments for overtime. Guaranteed pensions were thrown into the maw of the stock and bond markets in the form of 401(k)s. Healthcare was also eroded.
The Student Loan Corporation had a recent infographic on the ROI of particular majors. At the end of the day, it’s the major that will determine the career, although the school you go to has a lot to do with the type of job you have as well. Take a look at the SLC infographic here: https://www.studentloan.com/pay_for_coll ege/roicollegemajors.htm.
Why older workers are creating their own jobs
Deborah Ramsey went to work straight out of high school in the 1970s, working her way through the now-familiar rounds of layoffs, promotions and job changes at a series of banking, insurance and consulting companies in Philadelphia, her hometown. “I did my bit,” she recalls.
In 2005, she was working as an administrator for a technology consulting firm that was undergoing restructuring. “A lot of people were being laid off or leaving. I had been through two big layoffs before, I knew what they smelled like.” Ramsey decided to leave voluntarily, spurred by the changing work environment and caregiving responsibilities at home, where she looks after a mentally disabled daughter, an aging mother and mother-in-law, and her husband, a disabled veteran.
At age 52, she was ready for a change. Over the years, she had developed a strong interest in herbal remedies and massage therapy to help her daughter, who also suffers from asthma.
“I figured I had 20 good years left of life. I knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, and I needed to do something for myself. And I had been getting massages myself and really enjoyed it. It seemed to me women my age needed to start relaxing and enjoying life more, so I started Googling massage schools and wound up going back to school to get trained as a professional massage therapist.”
While she trained, Ramsey remodeled her basement and installed a massage table; and her first “clients” were friends who agreed to let Ramsey practice her new skills on them. Her practice flourished, and she moved out of the basement in 2009 to open her own inner city storefront natural wellness and spa, with help of the Women’s Opportunity Resource Center, a nonprofit that helped Ramsey with training and a $35,000 loan.
Ramsey’s transition underscores an important trend among workers over age 50 who find themselves bounced out of the workforce. Many are choosing to become self-employed entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs age 55 to 64 represent a rising share of start-up activity, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, accounting for 23 percent of new entrepreneurs in 2010, up from 14.5 percent in 1996.
I always planned to “go independent” in my 50s. The recession just helped decide the timing.
Bruce
http://PMToolsThatWorked.com
Entry-level job market best in 3 years
Good news, college grads: the entry-level job market is the best it has been in three years — but you may have to settle for less money and a position outside your preferred career path, a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows.
“There’s lots of positive news out there, and we’re finally seeing some significant job creation,” says John Challenger, chief executive officer. But before you start daydreaming about the corner office, he adds one caveat: The job market isn’t what it used to be, and it may not provide the “ideal job situation” for everyone.
The Challenger report highlights a trifecta of good news: Twenty- to 24-year-olds saw a 2.4 percent jump in employment during the first three months of 2011, more than any other age group, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey of 170 employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that they plan to increase hiring of new grads by 21 percent, and a survey of employers found that hiring graduates with bachelor’s degrees will increase about 10 percent, according to the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University.
“There’s still a long way to go, but I think it’s going to be a much better year for graduates than it was two years ago,” says Challenger.
The plight of the college grad isn’t anything new. Recent surveys show that soaring student loan debt and one of the worst job markets in decades have served a double-whammy for struggling young adults: nearly 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds are jobless or out of the workforce, according to Pew Research Center, forcing thousands of them back to their parents’ home.
But new grads have two advantages that their older peers don’t, Challenger says: For starters, the next generation of workers are a “blank slate,” allowing potential employers to influence their skills and work habits. Secondly, they’re flexible.
“I think a lot of companies are looking for people who can go where the work is and give up some of their work-life balance to find a role they want,” says Challenger. “Companies need flexibility in their workplace.”
Have faith recent grads, you are now being given the opportunity to work longer hours with less pay, few benefits and with the long term prospect that your job will ultimately be sent off shore to India or China. Meanwhile you will still be saddled with your student loans. Welcome to contemporary America and the so called unbridled free market system. My advice to well qualified grads, migrate to the EU, Canada or if you are more adventurous the up and coming economies of South America. The heyday of America is over and has been bled to death by the two political parties, US corporations and Wall Street bankers. Might as well live in a third world country with growth prospects rather than a banana republic that is on the fast decline.
Dream jobs for the 20-something set
How does someone go from having an interest in criminal law to penning a book about finding your dream job?
Just ask 29-year-old Laura Dodd, whose own bizarre career trajectory led her to having dozens of conversations with people just like her: a hopeful 20-something ready to jump into the worst market in decades — without settling for a mundane 9-to-5 job.
The result is “Dig this Gig: Find Your Dream Job — or Invent It“, a behind-the-scenes look at real-life jobs that will have some readers asking, “You can actually get paid to do that?”
Reuters talked to Dodd about the new reality of the job market, what 20-somethings really want (hint: it’s not a six-figure salary), and the coolest job she’s ever heard of.
Tell me why you wrote the book.
It’s so simple, really: this is truly the book I wanted, needed, and wished I had after college. It’s real people talking about real jobs and how you get there….stripping off the nebulous titles and telling the good, bad and ugly about jobs.
