Working through menopause | 10 tips to boost your midlife career confidence
Don’t let menopause knock your confidence in the workplace
Are you happy with how you’re recognised at work? Do you have ambitions to achieve more but feel that your confidence tank is running low? Menopause can knock self-esteem in many ways with physical or psychological symptoms having a real impact on your performance at work.
Zena Everett, executive coach and in-demand speaker on Crazy Busyness and Career Strategy, helps people achieve career goals they thought impossible, and so helps them to find fulfilment in their work. She shares her top tips to boost midlife career confidence below.
For some women midlife can be a time when they want to start winding down their formal careers.
Equally, for some, it can be an opportunity to accelerate our work, not least to build up vital pension contributions. I have seen women who have built successful freelance incomes return to the hard thrust of corporate life once they no longer have family responsibilities. They see this as their time, free to see just how far they can go.
Enlightened organisations, aware of talent shortages, want the knowledge, networks, expertise and wisdom these older workers can bring. And who wants to work for unenlightened ones?
You are in control of your next move. You can still be highly productive even if you aren’t reproductive any more, just make sure that whatever you do next is YOUR CHOICE.
Know what you want
Don’t let other people make assumptions about your career aspirations or capabilities just because you have reached mid-life.
The secret is to know what you want, and then articulate your potential contribution to whoever is paying your salary or invoice. Be an advocate for your own career, by honing your brand identity and ensuring you state your career plans and skills clearly. Write down your goal where you can see it and practise your pitch over and over again. Do this first.
Play the game!
Show a desire to keep learning and a willingness to fit in. Check out websites like www.coursera.org or https://www.linkedin.com/learning/me to brush up on your workplace skills. Have an energetic vibe, not a tired ‘been there and got the tee-shirt’ one.
Look like someone at the top of your game and behave like one. Yes, fake it to make it, ladies!
What can you do for them?
Ask great questions about the business you want to work for.
No one really cares about you and your home situation – they want to know what you can do for them. Understand what’s going on and how you can solve their problems. What can you do for them?
Shine a light on your talent
If you are in a role but feeling stuck, push for those career conversations that managers are supposed to have with you, but often avoid.
Organisations have great programmes to support their young talent, women returners and diversity agendas, but the talent and retention of older workers are still overlooked. It’s surprising when this is the talent in plain sight. (Too much like an old sock, perhaps; loved and taken for granted.)
Don’t wait to be asked
Career moves tend to be transitions, not leaps.
If you want to do something different in an organisation then find an opportunity to start doing it. Don’t wait to be asked. Take it now, so when a formal opportunity comes up you can demonstrate experience.
Keep building relationships
Grab lunch or coffee with colleagues in different teams to understand the business and get a heads-up on roles that might better suit you coming up.
‘What are you working on at the moment, I’d love to find out more.’ If you aren’t working at the moment, you’ll be surprised at the network you have – map out who you have access to.
Wise up!
Be wise to real and perceived ageism when trying to get in the door.
Don’t include the dates of your education on your CV or LinkedIn profile. You don’t have to detail your entire job history either; you can summarise it under one heading of ‘prior to 1990’ for example.
You can be naughty and have a misleading date of birth in your email address. For example, Zenaeverett79 might suggest 79 as my birth year (it is, obviously). Use a modern professional email provider, you are too old for Hotmail!
A clear statement
Make sure your personal statement is particularly punchy with a clear statement for where you are in your career and the next challenge you want to tackle. If you are opting for reduced hours, for example, frame the statement to explain why you are career orientated but also want balance.
Here is an example:
‘Having worked in senior executive leadership roles for many years, I want to concentrate on my lifelong passion for complex forensic accounting, particularly within international financial services. I would prefer to relinquish people management responsibilities, allowing me to work a shorter week and pursue my extracurricular passions as well.’
Never go down!
What I mean by that is that they won’t hire you into a role that you could have done well twenty years ago, just because you are feeling a bit fragile.
Once you’ve got your mojo back they know you’ll be off somewhere better and they will have the hassle of hiring again. There’s always an onboarding period to get up to speed with new systems.
They want a strong, wise, older, experienced person, not someone masquerading as a 25-year-old.
The C word!
Have you noticed that I have avoided the C word?
Confidence is a myth. It’s nice to have it, but we only get confident when we have done something. It’s a rear-view construct. The problem is that we can’t wait till we are confident to do something – we have to just do it. Know what you want, get your pitch right, practise your networking skills and get out there and talk to people.
Never let menopause knock your confidence in the workplace!
Zena Everett, January 2020
Read Zena’s brilliantly readable career book, Mind Flip, available on her website zenaeverett.com, Amazon or wherever you buy your books.
To find out more on this subject, read our read our post about How Your Organisation Can Support Menopause in the Workplace.
