Pair says there is life after 50 for executives who lose their jobs

You're over 50 and used to making a comfortable living in a "C-level" corporate position, but your company encounters financial problems and lets you go.

For the first time in years, perhaps ever, you are jobless. Hopefully, you have some money set aside, and can pay your bills. What do you do next?

Many go to executive coaching agencies for advice and to hone their job-searching skills.

Tucker Mays and Bob Sloane, co-founders of OptiMarket LLC, a Darien-based agency that coaches former executives through the job-search process, have written "Fired at 50: How to Overcome the Greatest Executive Job Search Challenge" ($14.95, Mira Digital).

Commenting that it can take an upper-level executive more than a year to find a management position, Mays said the book was written to help readers reduce that time.

"The problem with some executives is that they've been so successful that they don't know how to look for a job," said Sloane, an Old Greenwich resident who has held senior management roles with Colgate-Palmolive, American Cyanamid's Shulton International division and the National Football League.

Realizing the importance of networking in a job search, Sloane and Mays, a Westport resident, founded The Executive Forum in Greenwich in 1995.

"More than three-quarters of all jobs are found through networking," Mays said.

Executives who find themselves unemployed should try to find consultant positions as soon as possible, he said, because it could lead to a full-time position. He also advises clients to seek positions with smaller companies with less than $100 million in annual sales, which seem to be less concerned about age.

"They (executives) come to us because they are lost and stunned. They expected that recruiters would come knocking on their doors," said Mays, who held marketing management positions with Chesebrough Ponds and Miles Laboratories and was a chief operating officer at Avia, Spinergy and Diamondback.

After experiencing the depression of losing their executive positions in the early 1990s and then rebounding to find managerial positions, Sloane and Mays founded OptiMarket 11 years ago.

"We realized that after 11 years of coaching, the unfortunate fact that the unemployment rate for people over 50 is 15 percent -- double what it was before the recession -- we felt the time was right for a new book on how to get through this faster."

The challenge of being older and out of work can be overcome, said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger Gray & Christmas, an outplacement consulting firm.

"Of course age discrimination exists," he said. "They (upper-level executives) face a high price-tag issue. There are fewer jobs at that level, but there are fewer candidates who have been in that role."

For those who have been out of work for a long period, he suggested accepting a lower-level position to "re-prove" themselves.

Sloane and Mays will speak Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Fairfield Public Library, 1080 Old Post Road. The book is available online at Amazon.com or on their website, firedatfifty.com.