To the 50+ friends whose resumes have been read and cannot be read back: The AI that rejects you is the biggest lever for you to turn around.
A few days ago, I read an article (opens in a new tab) in “Business Insider”, and its title was “At 56, I can’t read back after many interviews, but I rely on this strategy to stay motivated”.
The interviewee said he only realized ageism was real when his daughters asked him, “Dad, why don’t you dye your hair blond?” After six rounds of interviews, I met with the head of human resources, the chief of marketing, and four senior executives, and then nothing happened. Not a rejection letter, but complete silence.
When I read this paragraph, I thought not of an American but of a whole row of 50-something friends around me. They all have impressive resumes, having worked on large cases, led teams, and handled numbers. But in the past two years, when they submit their resumes, more and more often, what they get back is that they can no longer read them back.
So, I want to have a chat with you: What does this phenomenon mean, and where should we go?
Let’s first explain Taiwan clearly.
The age discrimination that exists in the United States is not lacking in Taiwan, and in Chinese society, we don’t like to talk about it openly.
In Taiwan, no one will honestly say “because you are too old” when rejecting you. They will only say “the culture fit is not right”, they will say “you may be overqualified”, they will say “this position is more suitable for sprint type”, and they will say “we want to find someone who can be cultivated for a long time”. Translated into vernacular, these words often mean the same thing: You are too senior and too expensive, and I am afraid that I cannot control you.
Add to this the environment of the past two years: waves of layoffs in the technology industry, widespread corporate downsizing, and the need to optimize everything, plus a new universal reason called AI. As a result, middle-aged and elderly job seekers are caught in the most embarrassing position: the young ones say you are expensive, the AI ones say you can be replaced, and the judgment you have for more than 20 years seems to be only your seniority on an A4-sized resume.
What’s even more uncomfortable is face. In Taiwan, if you are still looking for a job in your 50s, is it presupposed that you are not doing well? As a result, many of my friends are too embarrassed to talk about their grievances that they have no time to reply to, so they can only swallow it in their hearts silently. That kind of self-doubt that I have done something wrong, the interviewee put it very accurately, and I have also seen it on many friends’ Facebook posts.
I want to clarify the origin of this matter first: many people have been read and cannot read back. Most of the time, it is not because you are not good enough, but because the system is no longer good at pricing people like you. This is a failure of the system, not your failure. Get the wrong attribution and you’ll just use the wrong effort.
The trap of rearview mirrors is even deeper in Taiwan
The most critical awakening for this interviewee named Michael Shmarak (opens in a new tab) was that he found that his resume was like looking back at his achievements through a rearview mirror: I have 25 years of experience in such and such an industry, and I have been the global director of some large company. He later turned it over and changed it to talk about what I can create for you going forward and what my “how” is.
On this point, I think Taiwanese people should listen harder. Because our workplace culture almost trains people to only sell their seniority. We are used to labeling ourselves by “how many years of experience we have”, and our resumes are all in the past tense from top to bottom. But for an employer who is afraid that you will be expensive and difficult to hire, using the past tense will only strengthen his fear and will not arouse his imagination.
The problem is that many people will completely tie their value to whether anyone is willing to hire them. The decision-making power of recruitment is in the hands of a person who will never read it back. Well, this is the real trap: you send your most valuable judgment, time and time again, into a room that only discounts it with age.
The answer I want to give: Don’t just use the method of “getting hired”, get along with your major
Rather than saying that I am a one-person company, it would be better to say that I have already seen through the reality. I’m not waiting for someone to hire me. I’m turning the judgment, methods, and taste I’ve accumulated over the years into something that others are willing to pay for. I am not telling you to quit your job and start a business tomorrow, but I am here to put forward a premise that many people have not seriously thought about:
Being employed is just one way for you to get along with your profession, not the only one.
A person in his 50s who is no longer read back by the interviewer may have exactly the same professional abilities as a person in his 50s with three time-sharing consulting projects on his hands. The difference is not in the ability, but in which interface they choose to use to hand over the ability. The former leaves the pricing power to the human resources director, while the latter keeps the pricing power in his own hands.
The interviewee from the United States is actually already on this path. He works as a timeshare executive consultant, he works in the retail industry to maintain his physical strength and connections, he teaches once a year, and he writes on Substack (opens in a new tab) to share his opinions. He said it honestly: sharing the content really brought him consulting projects, and some companies even took the initiative to say, “Hey, we want to interview you.” Did you notice that flip? When he no longer chases work, but continues to show his value in the sun, work begins to come back to him.
In Taiwan, I call this logic “productizing” your judgment (/blog/dan-koe-how-to-build-a-one-person). You don’t have to become an Internet celebrity. What you have to do is: let the right people find you at the right time and understand what problems you can solve now.
This is also what I have led everyone to practice in the “AI Content Production System Workshop” in the past few years: turning those precious judgments in your mind into content assets and product lines that others are willing to pay for.
The AI that was used to reject you is exactly the lever you need to stand up.
Here is an important point that sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but I especially want to tell my friends who are also 50+.
When the human resources director uses AI as a reason to reject you, the same AI is precisely the key to allowing a senior person to fight alone. In the past, if you wanted to accomplish something, you had to have a team: for example, someone would do design, someone would write programming, someone would do administration, and someone would do analysis. This is why when a person reaches his 50s, once he leaves the organization, he will find it difficult to move forward. Because, you suddenly don’t have a team.
But it’s different now. Today’s AI can be your assistant, your first draft helper, your analyst, and your second pair of eyes. I rely on an AI army to run content, products and marketing all by myself. This means that for the first time, a person with more than 20 years of judgment can monetize his expertise independently without relying on an entire company.
Moreover, the moat happens to be on your side. AI is good at production, but it can’t judge what is good? I don’t know what kind of thunder this step will lead to in the real world. I can’t tell which customer’s needs are real and which are fake? These taste and situational judgment are exactly what young people and AI cannot make up for, and what you have spent twenty or thirty years in exchange for. Age is a liability on a resume, but in this new way of working, it is sometimes the scarcest asset.
The interviewee regarded 50 years old as a superpower. I would like to say a few words for him: In the AI era, a senior worker who knows how to control AI is not the group to be replaced, but the group with the greatest opportunity to make a career independently at the minimum cost.
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Let’s also make it clear: this is not cheap motivation
I don’t want to feed you a chicken soup that says “if you start a business, the world will be brighter”, because that is unfair and unhelpful to people who are anxious.
There are some realities that we all have to face honestly: not everyone is suitable and wants to start a business; some people need a salary to pay the mortgage now and cannot support long-term operations; everyone’s conditions are different when it comes to health, capital or family concerns. The interviewee’s dodge and choice to move forward is actually very cruel. The reason why this interviewee went to work in a retail store, take on time-sharing projects, or teach at a university once a year was not a failed transition, but rather a buffer of cash flow, interpersonal connections, physical strength, and dignity during the transition.
Therefore, I will not tell anyone to close the door to their official position tomorrow. I would suggest that while you continue to submit your resume and take on bridging jobs, you start doing another thing: use your time after get off work to slowly grow the second path of “earning income through professionalism without being employed” inch by inch. When the cash flow from the second path begins to stabilize, you will find that your confidence in the interview is completely different, because you no longer need that job to define how much you are worth?
Finally, back to that sentence
The interviewee said that one sentence became the core of his life: “No life, no livelihood.” He brought the focus back to his wife, children, health and shelter.
I appreciate this sentence very much, because it just explodes a myth: We desperately want to return to the room that will make us unable to read back. Often it is not because we really need that salary, but because we regard “being needed by a certain company” as the only proof of self-worth.
But perhaps the most important thing for a person in his 50s to do is not to prove that he is still needed by the old system, but to build a place that will not make you unable to read back for yourself: your own profession, clients, works, and visibility that can help you generate compound interest.
So, what should friends who are over 50 years old do? My answer is simple, that is, stop giving pricing power to that room that will treat you silently again and again. Take it back and hold it tightly in your hands!
Your gray hair is not the nail in the coffin. In this era, it is more like a certificate that others cannot buy with money.
🚀 If you want to more systematically turn the judgment accumulated over the years into independently monetizable product lines and content assets, welcome to solo.tw (opens in a new tab) to visit the “AI Content Production System Workshop”. This is what I have been doing in the past few years, and it is also the path I hope to take with 50+ friends.
Further reading
- Understand these five things and you will see through any business: a one-person company does not have to spend 2 million to study for an MBA
- Dan Koe: To build a one-person company business model, how to productize yourself?
- Your idea has been done by someone before: In the AI era, where is the innovation space for ordinary people
- The threshold of audio and video has not disappeared, it has just moved: in the era of AI editing, the place where you should invest your time has changed
Next step
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Vista Cheng speaks and runs workshops on AI workflows, writing and content systems for companies, schools and public agencies.
