Those of you who follow football may have noticed that English Premiership club Chelsea have sacked yet another manager.  This time it was the relatively young and inexperienced Andre Villas-Boas, who is only 34 years old.  Whilst he may have made some mistakes in his man-management and being too adventurous in his team’s tactics, it seemed ridiculous to give someone so young such a short time in the job.  Everyone in football knew it was a difficult job and that the incoming manager would need to do some rebuilding, with the playing squad in a transitional phase.  But patience isn’t a virtue in football these days and Villas-Boas was sent packing.

Now, I’ve heard a lot of people expressing little sympathy for Villas-Boas because he will be receiving a 7 figure compensation.  But I think that misses a very important point.  Whilst the money he receives will be substantial, what damage has this done to his reputation?  Your perceived value is vitally important to your employability.  If Villas-Boas has taken a massive knock, then how much will that affect his reputation and thereby his earning potential in the future?  He’s young enough to hopefully be able to rebound from this and have a successful managerial career.  But this does highlight the importance of your perceived value.  It’s not just enough to be good at your job.  You really need to be able to market your abilities to your current employer and future, potential employers.

So what do you want employers to know about you?  Well the main thing is, they need to know the Results they can get by employing you.  What will you bring to the table.  You need to be able to tell STAR stories.  STAR is an anacronym for:

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

Basically, you have to tell employers what you specifically did (not the department, not the team, but you), how you did it and what results were achieved.  Companies want problem solvers, so if you can show that you can solve their major problems then they will attach a high value to you.  If you can’t tell people these stories then your perceived value will be lower.  If won’t mean you can’t do the job.  Just in the employer’s perception, they might rank you a little bit lower than if you could provide evidence of your abilities.

One great side effect of a high perceived value is that it great in combating ageism.  Someone like Lord Alan Sugar will have a massively high perceived value.  Business people aren’t going to turn down working with him on the basis of his age, because they know his capabilities and what he has achieved over the years.

On Wednesday night, during the first Chelsea game since Villas-Boas was sacked, Chelsea fans were chanting the name of “Jose Mourinho”.  Now there is a man who has got some major results over his career....and is not afraid to promote them!

If you’re middle aged, like me, then issues of ageism start to rear their ugly head in the area of employment.  I’m 42 now and I whilst I haven’t experienced it yet, if I had stayed in my previous career of legal admin then I’m sure it would have started to become an issue.

The problem with ageism is one of perception.  It’s not taking a candidate on their individual merits.  Instead, it’s lumping them in with an age group and assigning all the perceived negative perceptions of that age group to the individual concerned.  So to combat ageism, you need to elegantly distance yourself from those negative perceptions, and move away from the group so that you’re seen as an individual.  If you’re part of a group of very similar levels of skills and talent, then chances are an employer will take someone younger than you.  Whilst it’s illegal to discriminate on the grounds of age, it still goes on but isn’t overtly expressed by an employer.  For obvious reasons!

• Rejection on the grounds of age can be due to:
• Fears that you are not IT savvy enough for the modern world
• Concerns that someone your age will not be willing to managed by someone younger than them
• Your ideas will be outdated in the modern workplace

If you’re looking for a new job in a new company, then the concerns can be:

• Worries that you won’t stay in a job for too long.  That it’s only a stop gap until you get something better, even if you’ve expressly said you want a less stressful job and a better work/life balance
• Concerns that you’re overqualified and will soon get bored with the job and will lose motivation
• Fears that you won’t be happy for long on a reduced level of pay

If you’re just applying for jobs via recruitment agencies or by sending off your CV in response to job adverts, then you’re still amongst the herd.  You’ll face lots of competition in the current job market, and will many applicants for one position, unfortunately on way for employers to reduce the stack of applications is by weeding out some applicants on the issue of age.  You need to get seen as an individual, with your own individual strengths, skills and experience that you can bring to the job.  You want your ‘perceived value’ to increase and to stand out from the crowd.

So start thinking about:

1. Being seen as a problem solver.  Which company wouldn’t sit up and take notice of someone who has the ability to deal with their major issues.
2. Stressing the benefits that a person of your experience brings.  There are also some negative perceptions that a younger person can have, so stress that you’re a mature person in a positive way.
3. Look to address any of the negative perceptions you are likely to encounter because of your age and argue your case as to why they don’t apply to you so they won’t be an issue.

There's no point pretending that the issue isn't there.  Despite the anti-discrimination legislation, it's still a problem and it won't be going away any time soon. 

One of the biggest losses people can have in their life is when they lose their job.  When someone is made redundant, their experience is normally more than just “they used to be employed at Company X and they no longer work there”.  Like anything in life, there are the bare facts of a situation, and there is the emotional side.

People’s negative emotions can flow from worries about how they fear they might cope with the situation.  Will they be able to survive financially if they don’t quickly find another job?  If they are above 50, they might have further worries that they will be considered past their prime and that hiring companies will look past them and go for younger candidates.  What about supporting a family?  How will they cope with that whilst they’re out of work? 

There is also the sense of identity that a lot of people feel with their work.  If someone is a high flying executive and then they are laid off and are struggling to find work, then that may really hit their self-worth.  But you don’t need to be a high flier to associate a lot of your self-worth with your job.  Many people feel a pride in what they do and to have that taken away from them, against their will, can be quite hard for them to deal with.  As I mentioned earlier, it’s not just a case of looking at the bare facts.  What someone’s job means to them and how much they link their personal identity to it is an individual’s choice.  There is the question of whether it is wise to link your self-worth to things outside of you but the fact remains that many people do this with their job.  So coping with the knock to their sense of identity can take some time for them to come to terms with.

The circumstances in which someone left their work can also play a part in their emotional state.  In quite a lot of cases bosses use redundancies as an excuse to get rid of staff that they don’t personally get on with, rather than strictly looking at it in terms of who are the best performers and should be kept on.  If someone feels, whether rightly or wrongly, that their bosses used redundancies as an excuse to get rid of them, then they may be feeling quite a lot of bitterness.  Going straight back into another job may not be that straight forward, if they haven’t come to terms with their intense feelings of anger and frustration.  Their emotional issues may need to be dealt with first, before they can move back into the workplace.

Considering some of the intense feelings that people may experience when they have been made redundant, it is always a good idea to look for support.  Trying to deal with all this on their own is probably not the best idea.  Depending on how someone feels their friends or family would react to their need for emotional support, it may be a good idea to talk these issues through with someone who is outside their usual family or social circle.  Whatever works basically.

There is also another angle to emotional issues brought up by redundancies.  And that is with the people who have been kept on at work and survived the redundancy chop.  They may be feeling some guilt that they have been allowed to stay, whilst some of their friends and former work colleagues have been shown the door.  They may also have bigger workloads as a result and this can increase their stress levels.

So you can see that redundancy is more than just another job statistic.  There is an emotional side to it that can affect the person laid off, their friends and family, and their former work colleagues who are still working at their former workplace.  Which goes to show the importance of work to us and how much it means on a personal level.