As a 50-plus something (former and current) speechwriter who found himself in something of the same position, what I did was -- walk away from speechwriting. I reinvented myself as a consultant, doing everything from speeches to web site content to communications support for events; I reinvented myself again as the chief (only) communications spokesperson for a troubled urban school system; and then became an environmental communications specialist. Every one of us has experience and skills that fall outside our "core professional identity." And you may have to use and utilize every one of them.

Too narrowly specialized? Yes. Over-Qualified? No question. Too old? The great unmentionable (people get sued for mentioning things like that). There's a fourth one, too: You're threatening to people less qualified and less skilled (and yes, younger). I don't have a recipe for how to deal with all that (if I did, I' write the self-help book and retire), but I do know that I've often had to work -- work hard -- to make people feel comfortable with someone who knows far more and can do far more. Sometimes you have to swallow your experience and what you know the right answer is -- and help others come to the same conclusion.

Well, Glynn, this makes me sad—and a little scared. But it strikes me as awfully insightful.

I'm with Glynn. Just a few other thoughts:

Your friend says he has "more degrees and better credentials" than most of the people he's interviewing with. Is he certain that he's not coming off as arrogant in those interviews?

The longer one looks for a job, the more desperate one becomes, and the less inclined to see things from an outside point of view. Is your friend focused on finding the kind of work HE wants to do--or on finding a way to offer employers an answer to THEIR problems?

You're all so right. Especially in the communications field, over 50 seems to be synonymous with (1) tired and unimaginative, (2) slow and inflexible and (3) too medically expensive for the group medical plan to absorb. These misperceptions aren't helped by folks who really are "dead wood," who hang onto their jobs as long as possible, doing the minimum, being sick a lot, etc -- thus feeding into the "conventional wisdom" lie that people over 50 aren't good hires! So indeed we need to be creative to find work, and it's probably gonna have to be as consultants, freelancers, independent contractors etc.

Further, being "overqualified" in itself makes a lot of us frightening to hirers, especially those who don't really understand the ART of speechwriting -- and so few people do, do they? I mean, most folks who write speeches aren't REALLY speechwriters -- defining speechwriters as folks who are truly devoted to the skills of writing for the ear and achieving that exciting but difficult balance between capturing their speakers' authentic voices and giving their speakers rhethorical flourishes that make them sound better, more convincing, more sincere, etc., than their authentic way of speaking.

ANYHOW, for more than two decades I've said a good speechwriter must ALWAYS have one foot out the door -- understanding that if you're the person urging a speaker to say out loud that the emperor has no clothes, you'd better be ready to be shown the door if the speaker doesn't actually WANT to speak the truth (or to contemplate what truth is, which can be part of the speechwriter's job). The same holds true in getting hired. Though we as skilled communicators are masters at reading organizational mission and message and knowing how to translate these into speakable, believable words, the truth is that if the mission and/or message aren't really clear or accepted or believable within the hiring organization, and if WE sense this, then the hirers sense we sense it (the old saw about knowing you know they know you know) and we don't get hired because we just plain make them uncomfortable. Overqualified equals seeing through the scrim, as it were.

To continue old saws, it is part of getting older to grasp that when one door closes another opens. Not easy to accept when we need a salary and benefits (and who doesn't?), but it's the glass half full truth to balance the glass half empty truth: the corporate world in general is pre-disposed NOT to hire communications folks over 50. AND SO IT GOES. Best to all, Liz Mitchell