Eilene Zimmerman tackles career questions, including specific advice about encore transitions in her “Career Couch” column in the New York Times.

Parent newspaper The Arizona Republic has launched a bimonthly “Boomers” section in three of its newspapers — The Mesa Republic, The Chandler Republic and The Tempe Republic — providing a forum for experienced workers to connect with one another and get involved.

By Herminia Ibarra, Harvard Business Review, 2002.
If you’re ready to change directions and do something differ, don’t listen to your usual advisers, says Ibarra. In this article she recommends thinking less and doing more to test out possible new selves.

CareerBuilder.com, n.d. This online resource explains why employers should take the time to welcome and orient new employees and gives ten “onboarding” best practices. For all ages and all employers. Available here.

Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College, 2008. This report explains current older worker trends and provides an awareness, assessment, and action model for employers to follow. Available here.

The Maine Community Foundation is looking for a new generation of leaders: the boomer generation.

The community foundation, which is recruiting older adults for a leadership training initiative next year, is one of 10 around the country to receive funding from The Atlantic Philanthropies’ Community Experience Partnership program, which supports programs aimed at increasing the civic engagement levels of baby boomers.

“We’re used to seeing the aging work force described as a looming threat, a demographic drag with crippling repercussions for our economy,” begins an editorial in The Oregonian, Oregon’s largest newspaper.

But a groundbreaking report, “Everyone Matters,” from the Multnomah County Task Force on Vital Aging, helped the newspaper see the issue in a new way.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” the editorial continues, highlighting the report’s suggestion that businesses, governments and nonprofits “do a kind of mind-flip: Take this looming liability and convert it into a tremendous asset for our region.”

Q. You’ve spent your career in a profit-making business but want your work to be more in line with your personal values… Is this the right reason to make a switch?

Eilene Zimmerman tackles this and other questions about encore transitions to the nonprofit sector in her “Career Couch” column in the New York Times.

In her answer, she quotes Steven Pascal-Joiner, midcareer transitions coordinator for Idealist.org. “It’s not enough to say, ‘I want to work for a nonprofit,’” he said. “You need to know what kind of organization you want to work for, the role you want to play and why.”

Older adults, and particularly women, are indeed working longer than in previous decades, according to federal statistics that highlight the need for work that matters in the second half of life.

According to the new report, “Older Americans 2008: Key Indicators of Well-Being,” more older Americans are continuing to work past age 55.

In particular, women’s participation in the labor force has steadily risen over the past four decades. Among women age 55 to 61, nearly 64 percent worked outside the home in 2006, up from 44 percent in 1963.

The report explains, “Many women now in their 60s and 70s did not work outside the home when they were younger, or they moved in and out of the labor force. As new cohorts of women approach older ages, they are participating in the labor force at higher rates than previous generations.”

Linda Stewart heard from many of her fellow baby boomers that they didn’t want traditional employment but they didn’t want traditional retirement, either.

So, after 25 years in the financial industry, she launched Epoch last year to match experienced workers with specific tasks beyond an employer’s capacities. Stewart asks CEOs to name three or four initiatives that aren’t moving ahead fast enough. Then she matches them with specialists who can fill those needs.