It's About Attitude. Not Age

By Michael Willard

Surviving professionally after 50 is all about attitude, not age. But sometimes it is hard to convince the 35-year-old boss in the corner office whose historic frame of reference is Aerosmith – not Elvis.

When I was in my 20s, I looked at someone approaching 35 as middle-aged, slightly mildewed; someone at 50 as definitely over the hill and someone my age, close now to mid-60s, as a fellow who plays checkers all day and waits for the grim reaper’s visit.

These days, if you are looking for a job at 60, you have about the same chance of landing one as being caught in the crossfire of a terrorist attack.

It’s not easy out there.

I think the same perception—versus the reality—carries over to older professionals who have jobs in advertising and public relations. There is a feeling they have lost a step, and probably need to retire or take a less challenging or less creative job in the agency.

This stereotype is sometimes reinforced by people in the industry, such as Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, or even business philosophers like Charles Handy.

Sorrell, himself 65, said recently, ad agency management is too old to really understand new or digital media.  Business philosopher Charles Handy, nearly 80, once wrote that creative directors are less creative as they grow older.

This is nonsense.

The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright did his best work after 60; world-renowned heart surgeon Michael DeBakey helped oversee Boris Yeltsin’s by-pass surgery in his 90s, and the famous fried chicken man, Col Harland Sanders created a fast-food empire, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), when he was a pensioner.

In my view, Picasso, Matisse, and certainly Monet, did their best work after age 60.  And then there is Harold Burson, PRWeek’s Man of the Century a decade ago. His creative and strategic advice is still sought by Fortune 500 companies.  He’s 88.

But what I find is that many older professionals simply don’t know how to handle themselves, whether in job interview or even when approaching potential clients who just might be younger than their children.

For this reason, I put together my list of pointers for professionals who have already journeyed into what some of us call the “yellow leaf” period of our lives and careers:

Remember – tattoo it on your arm or somewhere – survival in the business world is about attitude and not age. Steve Jobs will, we all hope, one day be 65. My guess is that no one will think Spanish moss is hanging on his persona.

Live in the present. Corporate war stories are great around the bar but make you sound stale in a job interview or when being interviewed by a perspective client about your agency’s services.

Don’t get into the “been there, done that” syndrome. In most businesses, particularly the ad and PR business, it isn’t about what you have done but what you know you can do in the future. Give the person sitting before you a glimpse of how you are going to increase his or her business.

Don’t be tone deaf to current culture. Yes, I watch MTV and VH1 on occasion and subscribed most years to Rolling Stone magazine. This doesn’t mean one is trying to re-capture youth. It does mean that one’s frame of reference is something other than the 1960s.

Bring different dimensions of your personal brand to the table. In other words, continually add to your professional portfolio new talents — talents that will impress a job interviewer or a potential new client. We’re not talking about the ability to do magic tricks here.

We live in a technical world. Introduce yourself to it if you haven’t already. Don’t brag that you once stood in front of the printer waiting for a fax to come out, or that you are lost in any other computer program than “word”.

As a corollary of the foregoing, be technically social. We once heard of an agency in New York not being hired because those making the pitch were not on Facebook. Be familiar with social networks, and use them.

Don’t be yourself. Be your re-invented self. This goes contrary to a lot of business wisdom out there. However, if you are consistently adding to your portfolios, you will be an interesting subject for a job interview or a client interview.

What can we say? It’s a jungle out there and getting tougher. You need to learn to play the game with finesse, or settle for an under-funded retirement and a shuffleboard court in Sun City.