Work expert Keith Frost answers your questions

Money

Making money

Work expert Keith Frost answers your questions

Curriculum Vitae - on an old-fashioned typewriter

Our work expert Keith Frost is business manager at The Age and Employment Network (TAEN)

TAEN is an independent charity whose goal is open opportunities, free from artificial barriers, for everyone to choose whether and how they extend working life, retrain, change direction, stay fit, save for retirement and retire.

Before joining TAEN in 2002, Keith had a varied career in the private sector, mostly specialising in sales and marketing and general management roles.

When his corporate career ended prematurely in midlife, like so many older workers he found himself confronted with barriers to finding a new job.

A spot of good luck led him to Wise Owls – a specialist recruitment agency for the over 45s and a member of TAEN – where he was chiefly responsible for PR and marketing.

Here Keith answers a selection of your questions about work and your rights over 50:

Q: I have been made redundant having worked continuously within the commercial vehicle industry for the past 34 years.

I had progressed from apprenticeship through project engineering and spent the last eight years working for the sales and marketing as technical service manager for Europe, with a good salary and benefits.

I have approached the job hunting by looking at skill sets and tailoring my CV to particular disciplines but seem to struggle getting past the first hurdle. Any suggestions?

Keith Frost replies: If you're not getting to interview stage, the chances are that your CV may need work. It could also be that the covering letter you are sending with it needs to be more effective and/or you are applying for jobs which, for one reason or another, those doing the applicant filtering do not believe you are suitable for.

Have you had any expert help or advice on putting together your basic CV or on your job search itself ?

You are re-entering a competitive market so you have to attract an employer or recruitment consultant to read and dwell on your CV – which might well be one of scores, or even hundreds, that come across their desk in reply to the job ad. Why should they pick yours? You only have a few seconds of their time to make an initial impact.

The covering letter is very important. It has to grab their attention, show that you understand what they're looking for and state briefly why you are the solution to their recruitment need. It should be no more than one side of A4.

For both the covering letter and the CV itself, use whatever presentational or stylistic tricks you think will attract their attention and keep them reading it. Remember though, you want to be thought of as a serious candidate for the job and their company.

The problem with having a 34-year-working life behind you is that potentially there is an awful lot of information you could put down. Make sure the document you construct is no more than two sides of A4 and don't use anything smaller than a 12-point font size.

It needs to be physically easy to read. You can use bold text and larger font sizes for headings but make sure the overall page doesn't look too cluttered. You can use short bullet points for emphasis and to reduce the amount of free text - but use them sparingly and for impact.

Personally I'd only go into any real detail about jobs/roles you've held in the past 10 or 15 years – sum up your work experience before that in no more than a six-line paragraph if possible - which would include the names of any companies you worked at.

You are doing the right thing in trying to tailor the document to the particular job you are applying for. It is a mistake to have a single, standard CV you send for all job applications.

Look at the job and person description and highlight the roles you've held where you've demonstrated those particular skills and acquired/demonstrated that particular experience.

Those skills and experience can come from roles you've held and activities you've been involved in outside your normal work environment. The point is that many, if not all, will be ‘transferable’ into the new job you are applying for.

Then we come to the question of whether you give the game away about your age by putting your date of birth and the date at which you acquired any qualifications you have. My own rule of thumb is that I wouldn't put my date of birth down on the main application form — though if they supply a separate equal opportunities form, I would do so.

And as far as qualifications or training courses attended are concerned, I'd only put a date down for any acquired, or attended, in the past 10 years. This demonstrates that you are willing to acquire new skills and learning.

Again, from personal experience of being an older jobseeker, I found I fared better when I applied for jobs where it was the employer who was advertising their own vacancy directly, rather than a recruitment agency or consultancy doing the job for them.

So local or national classified newspaper job supplements are still a good place to look but the vast majority of employers will nowadays advertise their vacancies on their own websites , with the exception perhaps of their most senior jobs.

If you know the sector you want to work in, and the names of many of the firms within it, go straight to their websites. It's not guaranteed that the employer will necessarily be handling their own recruitment and selection process, but there's more of a chance they will be.

If you know people working in that sector, do try networking with them and let them know you are in the market for a new job. Not everyone feels comfortable doing this, but it can be effective. Word of mouth is still one of the main ways that vacancies get filled.

Don't discount either the support and help that a good recruitment agency might be able to give you if register with them. Some agencies are 'generalist' and handle vacancies from a wide group of employers in various industries; others focus on specific industry sectors or segments.

The agency can give you information, advice and support – and be very effective in doing the advocacy role on your behalf. But if you register with them, do contact them on at least a fortnightly basis to remind them that you're still around and wanting them to put you forward for suitable jobs. This is possible with agencies that have actual offices but there are an awful lot of web-based only agencies and job boards which can be effective - but they often lack the personal touch.

If you find yourself out of work for a period with no immediate prospect of getting a paid job, consider volunteering as a way of staying in touch with the working world. In some cases it can be a path back into paid employment.

Looking for a job is a job in itself – so do approach it that way. Contact me at the The Age and Employment Network - TAEN (email: info@taen.org.uk) for a list of organisations that should be able to help you with your job search.

Q: I am due to retire but my employer has agreed for me to stay and set a new retirement date of end a year from now. There is a good possibility that my job will be made redundant around this time. If I apply to stay on again and my employer refuses will I be entitled to redundancy pay?

Keith Frost replies: The Equal Employment (Age) Regulations 2006 (aka the 'Age Regs') did extend redundancy rights to people over 65. So if it is genuinely a redundancy, rather than a retirement, you should be entitled to receive statutory redundancy pay at least, or better if your employer normally supplements the basic statutory payments.

Under the statutory scheme, the number of years' service that is taken into account in calculating redundancy pay is capped at 20 years. And despite the Age Regulations, the formula used for calculating the amount depends on your age.

For someone aged over 41, which would obviously apply in this case, you are entitled to 1½ weeks for each year of service (up to the 20 years), multiplied by either your actual weekly pay or a maximum weekly pay amount under the statutory scheme of £330 per week.

Even though your employer has given you a new retirement date, they still have to follow the 'fair retirement' process laid out in the Regulations.

This means they have to write to you again, at least six months before the due retirement date, confirming that their intention is to retire you on that date, but advising you of your right to request to work on. And if your request is turned down, you have the right to appeal. However, your employer is not legally bound to give you any reasons for declining your request, though that shouldn’t stop you asking why they’ve turned you down.

Unscrupulous employers might try to use the 'fair retirement process' to avoid having to declare a position redundant and making a redundancy payment to the job-holder.

You should keep a note of any conversations and copies of any emails or other correspondence which may support the view that it is a redundancy rather than a retirement. For instance, would yours be just one of a number of redundancies occurring at that time – affecting people of various ages – or would yours be the only job that would disappear?

There is a 'fair redundancy' process your employer is supposed to go through in deciding who is to be made redundant, and if you are the only person who has been considered the redundancy may be considered to be an 'unfair dismissal'. But unravelling this is not necessarily straightforward.

Both Acas and the new Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have telephone helplines which will be able to advise you as you get closer to the planned retirement date.

Acas: Tel : 08457 47 47 47: Monday-Friday 08.00–18.00hrs

EHRC: Tel : 0845 604 6610: Monday-Friday 09.00-17:00hrs (an out-of-hours service will start running soon).

Q: I am struggling to get a job as I was told by one interviewer that they wanted someone who had had more than one previous job because by working for various companies would have given them more experience in the world of work. I had one career - 23 years in a bank - and have spent the last 14 years caring for elderly parents. How do I make my CV more interesting to potential employers?

Keith Frost replies: Just because you only worked for one employer it doesn't necessarily mean you only had one job. You may have held different roles and responsibilities during your time at the bank and you will have learnt a broad range of skills and built up experience and expertise in a number of areas.

You need to unpick and categorise it - for instance: customer service skills, office administration, handling and reconciling financial and cash transactions etc.

Also, in acting as a carer for your elderly parents you have had to build up and exercise a range of knowledge and skills in managing their care which should be 'transferable' and useful to an employer.

The skills that employers most frequently complain are in short supply are 'soft skills' – in other words things like inter-personal skills, good verbal and written communications, time management and working as a member of a team. I think you probably have these in spades so you should make sure that once again you identify, categorise and list them.

You should find the Skills Assessment tool which is in the Resources For Individuals section of the TAEN website useful in helping you do this (www.taen.org.uk/resources/individuals.htm).

There is an adult careers service in England which should be able to help you do these things – or point you in the direction of local service providers who can help. It is currently called nextstep - although its name is likely to change in the near future.

You should be able to find their telephone number in your local Yellow Pages or you can find the main contact number for the service in your county by visiting www.nextstep.org.uk

Q: I will be 53 in July and I have been told that at the end of March, I will be made redundant. I have two pensions with my company - my old final salary pension, which was stopped by the company in 2004 and my new pension which started when the final salary one stopped. I do not have a financial adviser and although I have looked on the internet, I cannot find what my options will be regarding these pensions. Can you help?

Keith Frost replies: As these are company schemes tthey should be able to tell you what your options are or at least put you in touch with the Pension Trustees and the Fund managers who should be able to do the necessary pension computations for you.

If the scheme rules allow it, at 53 you would presently be allowed to start drawing down your final salary pension early - if you wanted or needed to. After 2010 people won't be able to start drawing down an occupational pension before they reach the age of 55, but at present anyone over 50 can if the scheme allows it.

In terms of what I assume to be a direct contribution scheme, it is probably too early to start trying to draw down the second, more recent, pension you have as the pension pot you are building in it probably won't amount to much after just three or four years. However, a lot depends on your financial situation and whether you hope to get another job after the end of March.

There are a number of organisations, for instance the Life Academy (see: www.life-academy.co.uk), who provide information and advice on pensions and who regularly run a range of pre-retirement financial education and planning seminars around the country. Perhaps you could suggest to or negotiate with your employer that you attend such an event as part of your severance package.

The Pension Service publishes a range of guides on financial planning in preparation for retirement. See www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/resourcecentre/planningahead.asp. You might not be at the point of actually retiring yet, but this information would still prove useful.

Finally, if after looking at all the information you collect, you are still one of those people who, no matter how hard they try, find their normally lively minds go blank at the mere mention of 'pensions', then you should seriously consider talking to a reputable independent financial adviser about your options.

It could prove to be a false economy not to get professional advice on such matters.

* Keith Frost's opinions are his own and for general information only. Always seek independent financial advice. This article was first published in March 2008.