Email is one of the most convenient ways to be impetuously stupid, so if you are writing an email you wouldn't want your boss to read — or the SEC, or your grandma — then don't send it.
Assume that everything you write via email will appear in the business section of the newspaper. Compose your messages with care and pause before you send; ask yourself, “Does this email make me look good?” Obviously, if you are about to lie or cheat, do not send an email to document your lack of ethics. But there are some other, less obvious types of email which won't make you a felon, but they won't make you look good, either, so don't send them.
1. The you're-a-screw-up email
If you need to tell someone they did a bad job, do it in person so you can gauge their reaction. For example, if you open with “Your negligence on this project cost the department $2 million,” and then the employee starts crying, you probably shouldn't continue in an extremely angry tone — at least not until he composes himself. Another reason not to reprimand via email: people will leave this type of email in their in-box for weeks and weeks and reread it every time they want to resurrect their hate for you. Talking in person helps everyone to move past the conflict without sour residue.
2. The I'm-a-screw-up email
Do not document your weaknesses. If you must apologize for botching a project, do it in person so there is no email record of your mistake for people to forward around the office. The more documentation you leave, the more your mistake festers in peoples' minds. And for God's sake, do not send a mass email to apologize. You will invariably announce your screw-up to people who would never have heard of it otherwise.
3. The bcc email
This email function is for people who are insecure, manipulative, and undermining of their co-workers. Even if you are this type of person, do not announce it to everyone by using the bcc function. Sure, only the people in the bcc line realize you're using it. But all those people will understand that you are not strong enough to let everyone know who's reading the email. If you feel compelled to use the bcc function, ask yourself why. Then get up off your chair, go deal with the problem face-to-face, and then go back to your desk to send a more honest email.
4. The joke email
Even if it's the funniest joke of all time (which I am sure it isn't) do not send it to your co-workers. Why make the announcement that you read spam during work hours? You should be working. You might think that telling a joke is a good way to establish rapport, but a spam joke is unoriginal, and impersonal and does nothing to make you closer to co-workers who matter. Besides, if someone thinks the joke is stupid, she will think you are stupid for sending it.
5. The Dear John email
I am amazed at how many people break up via email, from the office. I realize that some people are such dirt bags that they don't deserve a nice breakup. I also realize that if you handle a breakup from your office then the pressures of work can distract you from the drama of your personal life. But I am sure that there will be a web site — maybe a new section on Match.com — for people to publish breakup emails received. And your name will be mud in the dating world if you are known for sending breakup emails from work.
The bottom line is that sending an email is like getting dressed in the morning — both are ways to manage the way people perceive you. The only difference is that if you have a terrible outfit, you can take it off and never wear it again. A terrible email propagates in cyberspace and will seem, to the original sender, to last forever.
Now that the war is official, the workday will change a little bit for everyone. Furtive looks to CNN will be more frequent. Travel will be less frequent. And many people will be nervous for themselves or for loved ones. Depending on where we think danger lies, each of us will do a few quirky things to prepare our work selves for war.
As a New Yorker who was at the World Trade Center on September 11, I probably worry more than most people. I have started working closer to home so that in the event of emergency, I don't have to cross a bridge to get back to my son. (Bridges and tunnels closed in New York City on September 11.) You might think this precaution is extreme, but here in New York, you can feel the tension over terrorism, and most of it focuses on work. After all, that's where most people were the last time terror struck.
My friend who escaped the World Financial Center on September 11 focuses his worrying on the logistics of escape. He warns everyone to know where exits are in your office and to have a good computer backup system. “This way you won't have to think about what you're leaving in the office if you have to run.” (To some this planning might sound extreme, but New Yorkers remember that at least one person died in the last terrorist attack because he took time to finish up his office work before he left the building.)
The war makes my brother Mike worry about money. (Not surprising since he works in finance.) He worries that if his New York office is blown up, he will not have life insurance. He explains that while most companies offer employees life insurance, most companies do not actually hold a large enough policy to cover all employees if their building blows up. Usually the rules of coverage dictate that the highest up in the company receive insurance coverage first. So, to prepare for possible violence, Mike is taking out a separate life insurance policy for himself.
Workplace war preparedness goes beyond New York. My mom's office, in Illinois, now has departure drills. They practice for a crisis where they cannot leave the building, and they practice a plan for evacuating the building. This is not a bad idea; the success of the World Trade Center evacuation is largely attributed to the earlier drills. And, my mom says her co-workers feel more calm in the face of war because their company is thinking about the safety of employees.
My friend Liz, in Los Angeles, has a stash of canned food and a flashlight in her desk drawer. “You never know about terrorism,” she said. “And if I get stuck at work, I don't want to be hungry.” I asked her if her co-workers are taking precautions and she said, “in general, no.” But she lives in LA, and she pointed out that people already have supplies in their offices in case of an earthquake.
At this point, we live in a country that associates terrorism with the workplace. And now that we are officially at war, the threat feels more palpable. You probably won't keep canned food at your desk. But maybe you will take a tour of your office building stairwells. The most important thing is to recognize your own level of anxiety, and take actions to calm yourself down. Whatever action you take will reflect the type of things you worry about, and the type of person you are.
There's nothing like forty bombs on a Middle-East metropolis to make you feel like your weekly widget report is meaningless. But we can't bring the economy to a screeching halt. If nothing else, we need to eat, we have to get paid. So we find ourselves making judgments each day about what is in poor taste and what reflects the needs of a workplace that must go on.
On September 11, I was working at a company located six blocks from the World Trade Center. I exited the subway right after the first plane hit. Took a look up at the burning building, and then walked to my office. That might sound strange, but I am one of thousands of people who did that, because office workers are accustomed to order, predictability and routine. Five days a week we exit the subway and walk to work. If you do something that often, you usually start to like it.
Even now, in the face of war, the predictability and stability of going to work every day provides a counterbalance to the unknown factors of battle. Some might say, “How can you sell widgets when people are dying in Baghdad?” But routine, really, is a way to cope. In the face of an unpredictable and violent world, the routine of the weekly widget report takes on near-spiritual meaning.
After the second plane hit the South Tower, there was a steady rain of papers out our office windows. There was a steady stream of employees saying, “Do we have a TV here? Do we have cable? Do you know what happened?” And there was my boss. He said, “Everyone should just go back to work. There's nothing we can do.” Even a half-hour after the second plane hit, my boss was in his office sending email to a department that ran around the office like over-excited school children at recess.
We will always remember my boss, locked up in his office, oblivious to doom. And this is the danger of our penchant for routine. It should be comforting but not a means of denial. When it was time for my boss to acknowledge that the day, in fact, would not be a workday, he could not make the shift in plans. Oh he shifted, but not until the office was engulfed in debris and the FBI had taken over the street in front of the building.
Working during wartime is a balance. We should appreciate the comfort of routine, but we should know when to make an adjustment.
Take a tip from advertisers, who know that airing commercials about familiar brands is comforting, but commercials rife with frat-house humor or on-sale-now jargon are a turn-off to a fragile population. McDonald’s, for example, will run branding commercials featuring children, and the company will save the hawking of value meal deals for a peace-time project.
McDonald's knows that people need comfort in consistency. These tactics may seem heartless, consumerist, or crass, but the reality is that we are all going to keep the economy going while the war rages. So when you show up to work, understand the value of consistency but know your limits. Know why you do what you do, and when it is time to stop.
And don't underestimate the stability work provides to a population on edge. Sure, we worry about another terrorist attack, especially now that the war has begun. But sitting in your duct-taped home, isolated, in a pool of nervous sweat will only exacerbate anxiety. We should all strike a balance between work and worry as a means to cope with war.
I know this isn't what you want to hear, but the people who are incredibly good at what they do are not unemployed. So if you are unemployed, you probably are not outstanding in your chosen profession. Sorry. But don't feel too bad, because everyone is great at something — you just need to find that thing. And there's no better time to soul-search than when you aren't making money anyway: No lost opportunity cost.
People who have incredible achievements in their career or show amazing promise have resumes that get snapped up quickly. Hiring managers receive hundreds of resumes for each job opening, and invariably, three or four of these resumes are outstanding. If your resume is not outstanding, you will not rise to the top of one of these piles.
Sure, there are exceptions: your idiot college roommate who is making six figures or the incompetent co-worker who survived the layoff that you did not. But I bet you cannot think of someone who has rocked the world of every boss she's had yet hunts hopelessly for a job.
Still wondering if you're one of the best? Well, if you haven't received some sort of offer in five or six months, that is not a good sign. Doors open when someone incredible knocks — even companies with hiring freezes make exceptions for outstanding candidates. Mike Russiello, CEO of Brainbench, says, “Companies are getting very good at identifying top performers — looking at things like, past roles in projects, certifications, and how someone interviews.” You are not going to fake anyone out with inflated Internet titles or achievements you cannot quantify. If you're not top you're not top.
And do not try to console yourself by saying that you are a rare find who suffers from bad networking. Sure, good networking helps. But the truth is that if you really are a rare find, the network comes to you. If you are amazing at your chosen profession, people call you, people check in with you, people want to be near you. You don't need good networking skills to answer your phone when it rings. You only need good networking skills to compensate for the fact that no one calls.
But instead of banking on good networking skills, how about changing careers to do something at which you are, indeed, outstanding? Unemployment is a great point in life to make use of excess time to figure out where your gifts really lie and what you really love to do.
Most people who are not outstanding in their job are not doing what they really love. The good news is that if you do what you love, you're more likely to end up rich. One survey of 1500 undergraduate business students found that 87% of the students said they wanted to make money quickly and figure out self-fulfillment later. The remaining 13% of the students said gratification was more important than money. Twenty years later 101 of those students were millionaires and all but one of those students were from the group who said gratification was more important than money.
There's nothing like a bad economy to make you more honest with yourself. Less money to go out to dinner, less money to go shopping: Try sitting at home and doing some soul-searching. At least entertain the possibility that you are not that great at your work and your talents lie somewhere else. You can spend another six months sending out mediocre resumes to scarce job leads, or you can recreate yourself as a person who is in love with your career choice and more passionate and competent than any of your competitors.
Change is difficult. And career change is especially scary. But in this economy, some people will find that not changing is more risky than changing.
Weaknesses are hard to beat, so if you’re really serious about making a personal change, I recommend a career coach. But be careful, because a good coach is hard to find. I learned to find good coaches by enduring bad ones. I also learned that when you find a good one, you can change in ways that will surprise you.
The first career coach I ever hired was someone who my boss recommended. He gave me the guy’s phone number and I called.
The coach’s voicemail message closed with, “Have a wonderful and life-changing day!”
I told my boss I could not work with someone who was so positive about change that he was a psycho.
My boss said, “This guy is renowned for working with famous business women.” (My boss dropped the name of a woman who worked with this coach. I am not going to tell you this woman’s name because you know her, and to this day I still question her judgment.) But the name-dropping worked. I wanted to be famous. So I agreed to meet with the guy.
He told me that most women he worked with needed to learn to be more assertive. He said, “I can tell you would be responsive to that sort of training, because you’re wearing a skirt.” Then he winked at me. So for my first lesson in assertiveness, I fired him.
My second coach was someone my boss read about in a newsletter. This coach told me I needed to appear grounded and stable as a leader. Her vision hit a nerve: I had catapulted up the corporate ladder, and some days I wondered what I was doing there. I thought I was wondering privately, but the coach showed me how my demeanor gave it away. “You walk like you’re on air,” she told me. “Your bounce belies giddiness and your swinging arms look impetuous.” She showed me how to walk so that I looked grounded and stable. The most interesting thing she taught me was that if I could change how I walk I would change how I felt. I wouldn’t have believed that until someone forced me to try it.
Later I saw a coach speaking at an entrepreneur’s conference. I hired her to help me handle board meetings. I learned not to smile so much. She pointed out that women smile a lot and men don’t and it makes men nervous. To soften the blow, she smiled at me. She told me my sweater was cut a little low, which made me happy since I never thought I myself as a woman with cleavage. But for the most part, her thing was public speaking, and I am definitely better at keeping an audience’s attention because of her coaching.
So here’s my advice on choosing a coach: Interview a few, because each coach has a different approach, and not all will be right for you. To get a sense of the coach, ask, “What are you best at doing with your clients?” If you like the answer, do a short trial session. If you ask someone what he or she is best at and they won’t give you an answer, it’s because they’re not good at anything, so hang up.
Recommendations from a respected friend or co-worker are a good bet. But, as you can see from my experience, a recommendation isn’t foolproof. I have had good luck going to a bookstore and perusing the careers section for books by coaches. If you like a book, you will probably like the coach who wrote it. Many coaches speak at conferences, so go to listen to a few if you’re on the prowl. One career coach I know routinely recommends my columns to her clients, so how bad can she be? If you absolutely cannot get up off your sofa, then get a recommendation from the career coach hotline: (239) 415-1777.
Enlisting the help of a coach may seem like a high-risk move — after all, a bad coach is really bad. But you also take a risk by not getting help to address your weaknesses.
Did you get Barney's spring catalogue? Neither did I, but I noticed my neighbor's pile of mail had the catalogue on top, so I stole it, because Barney's is a bellwether of how to dress for success.
Barney's, usually a snot-fest of nose-in-the-air overachievers dressed in black, is now whimsical and carefree as an antidote to the anxiety of terrorism and pressure of unemployment. The guys in suits jump, dance and play: Corporate fun sells.
If you are unemployed, you need to be up-to-date on what sells because you have a full-time sales job — selling yourself. This doesn't mean that you should act like a used car salesman in interviews, but you do need to be conscious of what product you offer to prospective employers. You need to differentiate yourself in a market where unemployment is so high human resource hotlines jam with overqualified candidates.
Think of the situation this way: You are looking for a job, sending your resume to the paltry selection of open jobs you unearth. The hiring manager receives 500 resumes for each opening. (This is no exaggeration.) More than 50 of these resumes are from people who are extremely qualified for the job, but no one is going to interview 50 people. Someone would interview 10 people, at most. By some miracle, your resume makes the cut and you get an interview. How are you going to outshine the other nine extremely qualified people in the interview?
The answer is by being fun. You are going to be the Barney's catalogue of the interview process. It makes sense that people would hire the person who is the most fun to work with. After all, office workers spend more time with co-workers than friends. So co-workers end up being weekday stand-ins for real-life friends.
My cousin just interviewed with a large company and she prepared for all the standard questions. But she got a new one: “How do you maintain optimism in these rough economic times?” You need an answer to this question in case someone asks or even if no one asks. Because people want to know if you're fun even if they don't know to ask; no one wants to work with a doomsayer, and no one wants to work with someone who starts out feeling defeated.
When you interview, talk about the fun in your life. (Do you play racquetball on Tuesdays? Do you go camping in the snow?) And be fun in the interview (Tell a joke if you are funny, otherwise, be a good audience.) When someone says, “Can you give me an example of a way you were a leader?” (How many times have you heard that question? 300?) give an example that includes a way you were fun.
Slip the fun stuff in wherever you can, but don't be a fake. Fake is not fun. Well, it is fun for the people who will make fun of you, but it will not be fun for you. The Barney's catalogue includes men in suits playing basketball. Check out the guy on p. 14. I don't think he had touched a ball in his life before this photo shoot. He holds the ball like it might bite, and he does not look like he is having fun. He looks like he is anxious about trying to look like he is having fun. Bad. Very bad. Surely his linen shirt will not sell.
If you are unemployed, definitely do not spend your money at Barney's, but if you can, steal a catalogue from your neighbor. And then do a little networking with your neighbor, because anyone who can still afford Barney's must have a really good job.
Current college fad: racking up double, triple, and even quadruple majors in order to impress future employers. This strategy is wrought with irony because, in effect, someone who has a triple major screams, “Don't hire me. I'll be a management disaster!”
My advice to all you triple majors is to dump the excessive course load and get a life. If you want to impress employers, use college as a time to demonstrate creativity, curiosity, quick learning and good social skills. Here's why:
A triple major exhibits no creativity. The most creative act is to choose a path for your life. College is an early opportunity to decide what you want to do with yourself, one course at a time. Cramming your schedule full of required courses for two or three majors is a rejection of creativity; in effect, you allow someone else to dictate your path for four years. Business visionaries set paths to goals that other people could never have thought of. Practice being a visionary in college by choosing a path no one else could choose.
A triple major is not for the intellectually curious. If you love learning then you will take whatever classes you want and you don't worry if they add up to another major. People who need their courses to add up to another major are people who are conditioned to learn only for an external reward. Employers need people who will be curious even after the grading system is over. In college learn for learning's sake, not for the department head's approval.
A triple major is for the timid. A broad education teaches you to learn diverse topics quickly. Practice learning something totally new by taking courses in each of the departments in your college rather than cowering in the safety of topics you're majoring in. Business requires a wide breadth of knowledge — writing, finance, technology, psychology, sociology. You can't learn every idea in school, but you can learn to pick up new ideas quickly.
Once you're committed to choosing just one major, stay away from business. In college you need to learn how to think broadly and critically. How you think is much more important than if you know how to map a brand strategy. You have your whole life to study business; college is your time for Shakespeare, Schopenhauer, and science experiments. In this new era of downtrodden, low-key CEOs, one CEO stands out for her star power: Carly Fiorina. And guess what her major was? English.
Finally, take some blow-off courses. You need time to develop social skills, because when it comes to business they cannot be stressed enough. Go to parties and make conversation with someone you didn't think you liked. Figure out how to like something about that person, because that's an important part of management— figuring out how to like even the most unlikable people. And stop by your professor's office hours. Don't have something to say? Make something up. Because that's what life will be like with your boss. Face time will be everything and you'll have to be savvy and strategic about how to get yourself in front of him and make him enjoy talking to you.
Learn how to make people like you. The smartest are not promoted. The most likeable are promoted. Dump the extra majors and use college as a time to learn about yourself. The more you understand yourself the better you will be able to relate to other people. That's what will really help you to succeed in business.
Being a whistleblower is fashionable right now. It's appealing to be the person who rights the wrongs of the workplace. And many people dream of busting their boss publicly for smarmy acts done privately.
Discrimination, kickbacks, broken promises — these are illegal and immoral acts that happen every day in the workplace. But be careful. Because the most common result of whistle blowing is not reform. The most common result is that whistleblowers lose their job.
Of course, it is illegal to fire a whistleblower for being a whistleblower per se. But the odds are that you will be fired: First your boss lets you know he hates you. Then you get no new projects. Then you stop having anything to do at work and your career stagnates. If you're lucky, you will be able to go to another company. If you're unlucky, your name will be mud throughout your industry.
This is not to say that we shouldn't have whistleblowers. I am as impressed as anyone else with the three whistleblowers on the cover of Time magazine as “persons of the year.” Cynthia Cooper (WorldComm), Sherron Watkins (Enron) and Coleen Rowley (the FBI), showed enormous courage and integrity when they blew the whistle.
But an important thing about these women is that they were all very advanced in their careers. They were at a point where they were trusted widely for their expertise. And part of their expertise was knowing what really mattered in the moral fabric of corporate America. Surely, they had all been harassed at work, and they had all heard someone cutting corners on commissions. These women probably spent decades reporting nothing. They chose their battle carefully.
If one of these women had made a stink the first time she was harassed, if she had brought that case to court, she probably would have received some sort of financial settlement, but her career would be over. She would not have climbed high enough on the corporate ladder to make the huge difference in corporate ethics that she did.
In order to make a huge difference in corporate ethics that is significant enough to be worth losing your career, you should aim to make a difference at the top. Most people who are at the beginning of their careers will not have the ability to make that difference. All you potential whistleblowers in the whippersnapper ranks, think twice about sacrificing your career in the name of corporate ethics.
You can't be a whistlblower each time your morality is offended: You'd never be able to hold down a job. So wait until the moral aberration is huge. And huge is relative, so know what sort of aberrations are out there so you can compare. (Reading assignment: Tales from the Boom Boom Room for extreme examples of sexual harassment and discrimination.) For the most part, our experiences are not extreme, and they should be dealt with through normal, company means — no need for whistleblowing.
Some times you will report questionable behavior to human resources and nothing will change. Stay focused. You will need to put up with a lot of morally questionable behavior at work in order to climb the ladder to a high enough point where you can make a difference. If you don't make it up the ladder, you will squander your power to make change by making small stinks about small issues that will get no attention from people in power.
For some of you, there will come a time when you do have a case against your company. You should call the Government Accountability Project. This nonprofit group counsels whistleblowers before they toot, and represents them after they get fired.
Until then, hunker down. Report abuse to someone within your chain of command. And don't piss people off so much that you undermine your ability to get real power to make change. Save your moral high ground until you get to high ranks.
For too many people, staying in the family business is the easy way to worm out of difficulties of adult life: finding a place where you fit in, discovering what you love to do, and living with the fear of rejection. Especially today, with a dried-up job market, the family business is a way of avoiding a difficult job hunt.
I worked in a family business — a bookstore. I started when I was eight, selecting titles for the early reader section, and by the end of college I was a walking card catalogue. After so many years, I was the heir apparent to the store. But I wanted to do something else. I just wasn’t sure what.
Fifteen years and three careers later, I am certain that there are three things you should do before you decide to settle down with your family business for the long haul:
1. Figure out your dream job. Don’t worry about being realistic. Rock star, movie producer, politician: everything is fair game. Then decide if you want to go down the path to fulfill that dream. Don’t feel bad if the dream is impossible – many dreams are not realistic, but they contain gems of truth. For example, someone who dreams of being a rock star probably wants to be creative at work. The exercise of dreaming helps you to figure out your core needs. Once you know these needs, take an honest look at the family business. If you cannot fulfill your core needs in the family business, you should leave.
2. Get a job. Even if you are sure you’ll stay in the family business, get a job outside of the business. Job hunting sucks, which is why you should do it. The process is humbling and scary because on one level, you are asking someone to pay you to work so you can eat; at another level, job hunting requires understanding yourself well enough to talk about your dreams, your strengths, and your weaknesses. You need to experience what it is like to ask for a day off from someone who doesn’t love you. Working for someone outside your family helps you to interact effectively with all people outside your family. This process is a rite of passage, and if you don’t go through it, you risk stunted growth.
3. Take a large risk. If the entrepreneur is on the high end of the risk-taking scale, the kid who stays in the family business is on the low end. At the end of life, the thing people most often say they regret is not taking enough risks. Make sure that staying in the family business will not make you wish later that you were a risk taker. If you take a large risk early on, then you can be more certain that you are not staying in the family business because you are scared of taking risks. Risks are different for everyone — a mountain for one person is a molehill for another. Find something that scares you and do it.
Adult life is about learning what matters to you and creating a life that reflects your values. In order to know what’s important, though, you need to see the world. Take time to establish yourself independently from your family — at least for a while — so you can see yourself more clearly. Whether you stay in the family business or go somewhere else, you’ll be a happier person for making the decision honestly.
I get a lot of email from people who are 50 years old and older and never expected to be unemployed at this stage in their career. Many of these people are annoyed that they are not appreciated for how much they know. Others are bitter, angry or indignant. Often times, these complaints come down to one thing: age discrimination.
Hiring managers know they shouldn’t discriminate based on age, but they do it anyway. Even when the victim has proof, usually a lawsuit is not as appealing as just getting a job. Ridding the world of injustice is a luxury for those who do not have trouble paying their grocery bills — now or during retirement.
I have not experienced age discrimination, but with sex discrimination I have found that bitterness and anger only hurt me. I am certain I have missed opportunities because I am a woman. But in my early twenties, when I was bitter and angry about sex discrimination, I was bitter and angry wherever I went. And my unpleasant personality hurt me way more than any lost opportunities.
Most hiring managers do not discriminate against women, or older people, but all hiring managers discriminate against people who are angry and bitter. And they should, because angry, bitter people are difficult to work with. So if you want to get a job, you need to stop being angry about the fact that people discriminate against you.
It’s very hard to hide anger and bitterness – they poke out of any little opening they can find. The fastest way to get rid of them: Convince yourself that most people are basically good, and when you encounter an asshole, assume he's an aberration and move on.
I have spoken with recruiters about age discrimination, and recruiters say that age is not an issue if the candidate does not make it an issue; enthusiastic, curious, and ambitious candidates are gems no matter what the age. But some candidates don't want to work for someone younger than they are. Some candidates can't hear constructive criticism because they assume it’s ageism. These people are doomed in the job market because they come off looking bitter. Before you cite ageism, ask yourself who, really, is making the big deal about your age.
My mom is a great example of someone who has overcome the age barrier. She is almost 60 but re-entered the job market at 50. She has received many promotions and she loves her job. I am convinced that her success is due, in part, to the fact that she is never angry about being old, and she is never bitter about reporting to someone twenty years younger than she is.
While my mom is just one person, she is a good example. She has a lot more experience in life than the people she works with, and she could lord that over people in a you-can-learn-from-me way. But instead she focuses on things that are new to her — what she can learn, what she can accomplish. In that way, she conveys the bright-eyed excitement that is essential in an enthusiastic employee.
So if you want to beat discrimination, try to ignore it. I am not suggesting that ageism is okay. It's not. But it exists, and you need to figure out how to get a job in the real world. So accept where you are in life and embrace that. If you are pleased with who you are then you will have a much easier time convincing a hiring manager that she will be pleased with you.
For all of you who are disgusted by the rampant discrimination that really does exist, I have found that the best way to change workplace culture is to infiltrate. You can't change workplace culture by whining from the outside, but you can change it once you are part of it. I have always used my positions in management to hire a diverse staff. You can promote diversity, too. Once you get a job.