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When Harold St. John was laid off in January 2024, he was confident he’d find a new job quickly. But as weeks turned into months with no offers, he started to worry.
Harold, a 63-year-old IT delivery manager from New Rochelle, New York, had never been out of work for so long. He was immensely experienced, with a résumé three pages long. He had an extensive network of former coworkers and friends. He thought it would be a breeze.
“Fast forward from January to the end of March. I’m spinning my wheels and thinking this is not good,” he says. His savings were running out and he was on the verge of losing his home.
His wife Susan was worried, too. When she suggested he try AARP Foundation’s BACK TO WORK 50+ program, Harold signed up and dove right in. “I immersed myself in the tools and I attended every meeting every week,” he says.
The program taught Harold to think of his job search as a “job campaign.” It showed him how to refine his résumé from three pages going back 40 years to two pages that focused on just 10 years and highlighted his transferable skills. He learned to evaluate job postings carefully to make sure they fit his abilities. And he treated his search like it was a full-time job, working every weekday from 8 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon.
“I put in 370 job applications from the day I was laid off,” he says. It was hard work, and often discouraging. But the program’s career coaches, Lynden Kidd and William Craig III, wouldn’t let him give up.
“I’m thinking, ‘I’m 63, maybe I just don’t have it anymore. Should I think about retirement? Should I start collecting Social Security? Should I reverse mortgage the house?’” Harold says. “But William kept me from going on that slippery slope to depression, and Lynden was my confidence booster.”
His persistence paid off. In mid-June, Harold got an offer for a senior role at TuneCore, a digital music publishing company based in Brooklyn, New York. Not only did the position match his skill set perfectly, but it also came with a much higher salary than he expected. The offer came just in time, he says: “I got the job a week before my unemployment ran out.”
And he was able to keep his house.
Harold praises BACK TO WORK 50+ for helping him land his new job and wants other people to know about it.
“The program gave me the process, the people and the tools I needed to meet my goals,” he says. “I’m not sure I would’ve landed this job had I not followed the program and put the effort into it.”
His advice? Keep at it. “Do the self-assessment. What are your skills? What are the transferable ones? What kind of company are you looking for?
“Every ounce of energy you have every day has to go into it,” he adds. “That’s what it takes.”
Learn more about BACK TO WORK 50+ and register for a workshop.
Read more stories about how our programs have helped people find hope, and about the volunteers who give so much of themselves to help others.