AARP Hearing Center
Once the pandemic ends, a large number of older workers will need to find a new job — or even a new career. And the available jobs will be moving more to telecommunicating and digital work than ever before. Here's what you can do now to prepare for the new reality of work.
1. Learn new digital communication platforms.
You'll likely need to get used to video interviews or meetings, since communicating via video chats and file sharing will be more popular. Remote-work digital training is available on sites such as LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, YouTube and Udemy. First, try free online tutorials provided by the app developers themselves: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and Google. Then move to collaboration apps for team projects, such as Basecamp, Asana and Trello. Most are intuitive and easy to learn.
2. Polish your LinkedIn profile.
When the scramble for jobs starts, this will be your personal billboard to present yourself well to prospective employers. Add any recent awards or promotions, and detail any work-related skills learned in recent weeks that will make you more attractive for telecommuting jobs. Do a LinkedIn search to find contacts you might connect with at a company where you might want to work. Follow ones that intrigue you. Look at profiles of others in your field to get ideas of how you might tweak your own.
3. Police your digital identity.
Now that you might have some time, remove anything posted on social media that you wouldn't want employers or recruiters to see. Search your name and click on the top 10 links. You're looking at what a potential boss can see. And, yes, these days potential employers are looking at you in every digital channel. Some of this footprint is of your own creation; at a minimum, you should have polished pages on LinkedIn and Facebook. But also check out Facebook posts you're tagged in but didn't originate. Untag yourself from anything unprofessional.
