Today was a “pay it for­ward” day, coach­ing some­one who’s been out of the job mar­ket for 5 years, and now wants back in. Alice needs help think­ing about options, iden­ti­fy­ing what’s new or changed in the busi­ness envi­ron­ment and her own pro­fes­sional arena. She’s strug­gling to find her best self while explor­ing how and where to re-enter the job mar­ket.

Although career coach­ing is not my forte, I’d agreed to this meet­ing at the request of an Apple col­league who thought I could offer some use­ful per­spec­tive and thought-pro­vok­ing ques­tions. Before the meet­ing I for­warded Alice some web links just to get her cre­ative juices flow­ing. That set a great con­text for our con­ver­sa­tion.

When Happily Ever After Doesn’t Last Forever

It’s the kind of sit­u­a­tion you see here in Seat­tle (or the Sil­i­con Val­ley, Austin, etc.): Alice retires early, thanks to an IPO from a famous Seat­tle suc­cess story. Mar­ries, has kids. Hap­pily ever after — or for as long as the stock holds its value. A fairy tale come true, or so it seems.

Fast-for­ward 5 years, Alice’s kids are now in school, bore­dom sets in, per­haps money is no longer stretch­ing as far as it once did.

But what’s really moti­vat­ing Alice is the emo­tional need to re-engage with what she calls “a tribe.” Recon­nect­ing with adults, away from the play­ground with the nan­nies and other moms. Form­ing bonds with other like-minded pro­fes­sion­als who love to do great work, with and for oth­ers. Learn­ing new skills, test­ing one­self in the chal­lenges of the work envi­ron­ment. Help­ing “the tribe.”

Alice had been an accom­plished expe­ri­ence (UI/UX) designer for a local com­pany with global brand recog­ni­tion. She has some impor­tant accom­plish­ments on her resume, but no pro­fes­sional achieve­ments to speak of for the past 5 years. Her time was invested in being a mom, vol­un­teer­ing at the preschool, and so on.

A lot has changed tech­ni­cally in the world of dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, online mar­ket­ing, social net­work­ing, etc., since Alice left the work­force 5 years ago. For design­ers it’s been a vir­tual tsunami of change…

The First Step on Her Journey

Alice knows she has a lot to learn, so the ques­tion is where to start, where to focus her time and ener­gies. What to do to refresh her port­fo­lio, her per­sonal brand­ing, her “show and tell” mate­ri­als. Should she go back to school, get an advanced degree or pro­fes­sional cer­tifi­cate, or find an entry-level role and essen­tially start over…

Alice’s self-esteem is some­what frag­ile; she’s out of prac­tice with “sell­ing her­self” to a prospec­tive employer or client. She’s heard that employ­ers or clients pre­fer kids fresh out of school, who com­mand lower payscales than expe­ri­enced design­ers like Alice. (And let’s not even go down the path of the higher value placed on devel­op­ers ver­sus design­ers these days…) It’s hard for Alice to imag­ine how to sell her­self against a younger per­son with more up-to-date tech­ni­cal skills — 5 years being a vir­tual life­time in the web world.

Sadly, age bias in the work­place is very real, even in lib­eral places like Seat­tle. As a Boomer it’s painful to see age bias rear its ugly head as an employ­ment issue even for rel­a­tively young women, peo­ple in their mid-30’s like Alice.

So we talked about ways Alice could seek oppor­tu­ni­ties that might value her strengths, rather than focus­ing on her near-term skills gaps. Some of these areas, like the “visual think­ing move­ment,” were off the radar screen when Alice was still work­ing. Some offer real promise for tal­ents like Alice’s.

At the end of a long con­ver­sa­tion, I was able to steer Alice toward some oppor­tu­nity areas that might value her strengths, wis­dom and career expe­ri­ence. It felt good.

But what was most reward­ing was see­ing Alice light up, excited by notions about where she could still make a dif­fer­ence, even if in dif­fer­ent forms or media than 5 years ago. I hope she finds her new tribe.