Lisa Johnson Mandell - Career Comeback: Repackage Yourself to Get the Job You Want

Copyright 2010 by Lisa Johnson Mandell

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Springboard Press

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First eBook Edition: January 2010

Springboard Press is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Springboard name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-446-55811-2

To all those bold and resourceful enough to seek a job they love

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you dont mind, it doesnt matter.

Mark Twain

H oney, you look old.

Ah, those four words every newlywed longs to hearespecially from her recently acquired husband, who is ten and a half years her senior. To his credit, he was talking about the way I looked on paperon my rsum, to be specificnot in person. Otherwise he would have found himself sleeping in the den with the cats for the next several months. At the time we were reassessing my job search strategy, trying to figure out why the hundreds of rsums I was sending out were eliciting zero response. This was when the economy was just beginning to take a dip.

But the simple truth of the matter was that I not only looked old on paper, I was old. In dog years, I would be dead. I was exactly forty-nine at the time, a veritable antique by todays standards, although I prefer to use the term classic. I was about eight months away from AARP eligibility. I was impatiently waiting at the mailbox every day in hopes of receiving my membership card so I could take advantage of all those early-bird dinner specials. And to be honest, I was at the point of needing them, because my income was minimal and my savings were dwindling. Still, thats no excuse to buy into the ageist stereotype of people over fifty lining up for early evening dinner discounts. In fact, most people I know between the ages of forty and sixty-five dont get off work in time to take advantage of them.

Looking at my situation more objectively, if forty is the new twenty and fifty is the new thirty, as the media suggest, then I was only twenty-nine, which made perfect sense; Id been celebrating my twenty-ninth birthday for years. But when most people, particularly younger people, think of a woman nearing fifty, they envision a bad gray perm and sensible shoes. They dont envision the exquisitely cut Madonna (who is actually a few months older than I am) and they dont see a glowing Christie Brinkley. Instead they think of a wizened Dr. Ruth.

My seventy-plus-year-old mother doesnt even look like Dr. Ruth did when she was that age. As a matter of fact, some of my favorite clothes (including the famous T-shirt that was a big hit in the Wall Street Journal when they ran an article about me Botoxing my rsum) are hand-me-downs from dear old Mom. The former model gives me so much more than great genesshe gives me great jeans!

The fact is, age has become ambiguous these days, and last generations stereotypes no longer apply. Still, in a workplace driven by the nations obsession with youth, those stereotypes persist in rearing their crusty, haggard heads, stretching out their bony, emaciated fingers at those of us over forty and croaking, Too old! Nowadays, there are fewer jobs, and the competition for them is more fierce than ever. We certainly dont need the additional burden of ageist images and prejudices to hold us back.

Ageism is especially prevalent in my field and in my market. Im in the entertainment industry, and I live in the youth-crazed epicenter of all things young, beautiful, and surgically enhanced: Los Angeles, right next door to Hollywood. I know my choices of profession and place of domicile are my own faultI take full responsibility for them, as nave as I was about their drawbacks when I selected them. I decided to move back to Los Angeles about ten years ago to better pursue my career as an entertainment journalist, to be closer to my family, and, to be perfectly honest, to have better access to a much larger pool of single men.

Through a bizarre series of events, Id been working in Salt Lake City for the past fourteen years, where it was relatively easy to be a big fish in a small pond. But alas, Id finally exhausted all the journalistic feeding sources: every print, radio, and television outlet in the state. I had finally become frustrated by the predominant conservatism in the areaI know, I know, it took me fourteen years to figure this out? Was I in a coma? In Utah, my editors/producers would tell me, Lisa, we love your ideas, but could you rein them in just a little? You know how the folks are here. In Los Angeles, theyd tell me, Love your dress, love your shoes, love your purse, love your ideas, what else ya got, babe? The creative freedom and encouragement L.A. offered, not to mention the salaries, seemed irresistible. Then there were the men. Id already dated every single man in a thirty-year age range from Las Vegas to Denver, and even the polygamists were starting to look good. It was high time for me to get out of Dodge.

That was almost ten years ago, and back then I didnt notice that everyone in Los Angeles was younger, blonder, and had bigger boobs than I did. I was just thrilled to be back in my own hood, so to speak. I was a native daughter come home. The state and its economy should welcome me with open arms, shouldnt it? I would have no trouble finding a job and fitting back in, or so I thought. My family had been an integral part of Southern California for generations! Im one of those few people who were actually born and raised in the Southland, you see. I like to call myself a fifth-generation Angelena, because my great-great-grandparents moved to Southern Cal from Scandinavia more than a century ago. My maternal grandfather was a dean at Santa Monica City College. My maternal grandmother earned her masters at USC back in the 1920s, when most women didnt do those sorts of things, and she then worked as a junior high school counselor, helping Frank Sinatras kids and their peers find their academic niche.

On my fathers side, my grandmother owned one of those haute couture fashion salons where clothing is not displayed on racks, but rather on modelsthe type of place where Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe worked in How to Marry a Millionaire. My great-aunt worked for the studios and actually costumed the great Marilyn. Aunt Susie used to entertain my sister and me with scandalous tales of the sex goddesss penchant for clothes one size too small (so she would appear to be busting out of them), and her aversion to underpants. (Unsightly VPL, doncha know?)

Rest assured that I wasnt one of those privileged, silver spoon kids who had everything laid out at my feet and never experienced hardship. We all have our crosses to bear, and I believe my trials could rival anything youve ever heard sobbed out on a talk show couch. Like most of you, I had to work and work hard for everything Id achieved. I worked my butt off in high school to get good grades and I participated in every extracurricular activity in order to earn the scholarships necessary to get the best education available. I covered the rest of my college expenses myselfsometimes existing on one mint brownie a dayhey, if I was only going to eat once, it had to be something I loved. That was back in the late 1970s, before we started waging the Great War on Carbs, and processed sugar was still our friend.