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"Mid-career and older workers have mortgages, kids in college, they're supporting older parents. They don't have the luxury of saying, ‘I'm going to take the next two

years and acquire this new skill,’ even if it's in demand,” says Maria Heidkamp, director of the New Start Career Network, a Rutgers University program serving people 45 and over. What

they need most “are the technical skills to apply for a job, because it is virtual now, and that may be new for people,” says Forrester, in Tucson. Very new, to one Washington, D.C.-area

nonprofit executive and attorney in her 60s — she asked that her name not be used — who says she never before had to actively look for work. “I always networked to a job,” she says. Now

she's learning new ways to network: on Zoom and LinkedIn. "In some ways it's the same skill set: how to speak comfortably and quickly in a concise way,” she says. “But what I

didn't realize is how valuable LinkedIn has become." Hal Rogoff, who is also in his 60s and lives in Maryland, has worked in fields as varied as public administration, finance and

engineering. But he always got those jobs “by hearing something from a friend and hopping on it." Looking for work now, he says, “requires a different approach. And I haven't done

this for a long time.” The competition for what jobs exist, meanwhile, “is really, really young,” Coleman says — especially in Austin, where she also lives. “They're coming out of

school and starting work with really new technological skills that a lot of us in our 50s don't have." To catch up, Coleman took a course in job-seeking strategies, part of the 

Digital Skills for Today's Jobs program at Austin Community College. Sixty percent of the people in the class are 50 and older, the college says. "You've got to sell

yourself,” she says. “You have to spell out your accomplishments. You have to make then quantitative. You have to have keywords in your résumé to match the description and show how qualified

you are." Childers took the same class. He's had a few interviews here and there since April, but his teenager, who just turned 16 and is proficient with digital technologies,

landed six in just one week. "My kiddo,” Childers says, “is outpacing me at job-hunting."