Cow milker, turnstile ticket seller, footballer in Norway: why ALL our jobs reinforce our experience

Older workers’ employer seminar places filling up – reserve your place now.

LinkedIn is Facebook for grown-ups.

It can be relied upon to be sensible, civilised and corporate as it’s where businesses and professionals talk to each other.

That’s why one of its main functions is recruitment, member profiles unroll seemingly perfect work histories to catch the eye of the many consultants combing through its online CVs.

But how should someone present themself on the site if they have retired, only to return to work? Before the digital age, this wouldn’t have posed a problem.

As we now live more of our life online, how do the growing number of people who are returning from retirement style their profile - from finishing for good to changing their mind?

How would that sit in the online timeline of their working life?

It’s a question worth asking as we draw closer to the third session of our Inspire series – a look at what older workers can bring to an organisation and what HR teams and business leaders can do to make the most of this demographic upheaval, the steady flow of people reversing retirement.

Live, learn, work, retire is no longer a straight line and companies which have grasped this new reality stand to benefit from the informed insight older colleagues can offer.

Their experience comes from many different sources and times. It struck me that, in not including jobs which predated professional careers in our online CVs, are we missing out?

One of my jobs as a youngster was taking ticket money at the turnstiles of Southampton’s old stadium, The Dell. Another colleague was a dairy hand, milking cows. Compared to a former professional footballer in Norway – he’s with us, too - perhaps not as glamorous but a conversation-starter? An intriguing way to assess the person before the profession?

Personally, I see it as an authentic way to counter what can be the illusory perfection of ubiquitous digital portraits. A way to help us understand more closely what experience really looks like in the real world.

What would LinkedIn look like if these long-gone roles were added to our “official” progression? Would it not paint a more colourful picture? And make it more acceptable when people re-start a new, or familiar, phase when convention used to dictate they’d stopped forever?

Think of a job you did that’s not part of your resumé and what it says about you. It might be a good way for us to talk about how we appreciate how we manage older workers in this new era.

*Steve will be featuring on the panel of our Older Workers Inspire session alongside guest speakers to guide HR and business leaders on how they can address this trend.