Boomers need to reset their retirement clocks

Recognized as an innovator and visionary in both the Internet and career industries, Eons CEO and founder Jeff Taylor reinvented the way job hunters seek employment. His "monster idea," conceived at the dawn of the World Wide Web, quickly became one of the first dot-com companies (Monster.com was the 454th registered domain on the Web) and has since become the world's leading online career site. Today, the Monster global network consists of 22 local content and language sites in 20 countries and serves 20 million unique visitors monthly.

Taylor is a frequent speaker at colleges and universities across the country and serves as an expert at technology, advertising and human capital conferences. Taylor co-authored the book, "Monster Careers," which hit bookstores nationwide in April 2004 and offers job seekers a step-by-step plan for finding the job of their dreams.

Taylor serves on both the National and Massachusetts boards of directors of Junior Achievement and is also a board member of Boston's Wang Center for the Performing Arts. Taylor holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; a Certificate-Owner/President Management (OPM) Program, Executive Education, Harvard Business School; and an Honorary Doctorate from Bentley College.

For our first Career Center article, we asked Jeff for his thoughts on what boomers should expect on the job front as they approach retirement.

The Situation: Seventy-seven million baby boomers are moving into the twilight of their careers, with the front end of this generation - those born in 1946 - turning 60 this year. And everyone is wondering what will happen when, over the next five to 10 years, the boomers exit the workforce.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistic estimates that in the year 2010 there will be 167 million jobs and only 157 million workers available - a shortage of 10 million workers.

Boomers are wondering if they will have enough to live on in retirement. Companies are wondering how they will make up for the loss of not only the skills and experience of these longtime employees, but also the shortage of workers to take their place.

What do you think will happen?

If the economic pattern of the past three decades continues, this mass exodus of baby boomers will come just as the economy begins to expand - just as it did in the late '70s, '80s and '90s. The labor shortage will put pressure on companies to create new kinds of job arrangements that will fit the boomers' demands for work that is no longer at the center of their lives, in much the same way women in the early 1980s brought pressure on companies to create job-share arrangements so they could raise a family.

What will the new job arrangements look like?

Boomers will work longer, but they won't be in the same kinds of jobs they're doing now. I think you'll see a clear movement away from the foundation jobs they worked while they raised a family to new jobs with fewer hours, flexible schedules, and less responsibility, and, most likely, reduced pay.

Companies will position themselves around being an employer of choice for the 50-plus worker, and companies that recognize this early will do well in being able to resource into this talent pool of almost 80 million people.

What should boomers be doing about their careers?

That will require more space than I have here, but here are a few ideas:

• Reset your retirement clock. Before you reach full retirement, you're going to have to work as much as 15 years longer than your parents or grandparents did.
• Rethink your view of retirement. I like the term "graduation" -- the idea that there's a celebration of exiting the traditional, foundation job and going on to a job of choice, in much the same way a college graduate leaves the university for the next stage of life, her career. Other terms for this are "rehirement" or "rewirement" (Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners, authors of "Don't Retire, Rewire!").
• Identify your personal skills. Gen X'ers and Gen Y'ers have been wired in to identify themselves by their skill set, as a C++ programmer or an email marketer, for example. But baby boomers are more likely to say, "I've worked for 25 years for marketing at Sears," and aren't thinking so much about their individual skill set. Boomers need to become more like their younger colleagues.
• Find something you love and make it your job. Not everyone has the opportunity to be entrepreneurial in terms of starting a company, but that doesn't mean you can't lead yourself to a company that does things that you're interested in. An option along this same line is to try consulting on the side while you continue to work full time.
• Adjust your expectations. It can be a horrible moment in a person's career when they go from making $50,000 a year to making $8.50 an hour in a part-time or hobby job. You need to focus on the opportunities of this new life -- reduced hours, flexible schedules, and reduced stress and pressure of no longer having to manage other people.
• Go back to school. This can mean taking a course or attending a workshop to learn new skills, or it can mean "going to school" at work by getting involved with new projects. As people get older they tend to narrow their focus and avoid new projects because they don't want to expose potential skill deficiencies. Breaking that pattern is critical to finding success and renewed energy both in terms of your outlook and people's outlook on you.
• Keep working while you explore a career change. You're always in a power position if you have a job; you lose some of your strength in negotiation if you're out of work. It's not a bad thing to be out on the street, it's just that you're in a more powerful position if you're making money during your career exploration.

It would be a mistake to sit and wait. If you are in human resources, you need to plan for the possibility of a labor shortage that will be even deeper if the retirement picture improves for boomers. And if you are over 50, and at or near the peak of your career, you need to start thinking about what you want to do when you graduate.