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Are you looking for a job? Are you 50 years of age or older?

For experienced workers, it can be tough to find the right job. If you’ve been looking for awhile, you might be frustrated or discouraged. You have questions and you need answers.

AARP Ohio and 93.1 WZAK are here to help! We want your questions about your job search. We can’t answer them all, but we will take some of the most interesting questions and answer them in a weekly segment each Monday.

Listen to 93.1 WZAK each week for the AARP Work at 50+ Tip of the Week to help you get that job.

For more information visit: http://www.aarp.org/money/work

Here are some sample questions and answers.

Q: Lisa: After you do everything that they tell you to do, you go to school, take out a loan, going to school for two degrees and you look out on that Web site and there are no jobs, what do you do after that?

A: Great question Lisa! Online listings and job fairs can help, but networking is still the most effective job-search tool. Can you succinctly communicate what you are looking for? Take some time to develop a personal “elevator speech” and then share a brief summary of your skills and goals with friends and family, and post it on your social networking pages—like Facebook and LinkedIn. Your elevator speech and networking efforts can unlock job opportunities that will never be advertised. For more about developing your elevator speech or networking, go to aarp.org/work and search “elevator speech” .

Q: Shannon: My mom retired about three years ago and she is tired of staying at home and she wants to know: where can she go to find employment for people 65 and over?

Q: Brian: I’d like to know what types of programs are available for senior citizens to facilitate their employment?

A: There are free local services that can help. Two of the best are your local One-Stop office, a local affiliate of Ohio’s Office of Workforce Development. The other is the Senior Community Service Employment Program. To find local services go to servicelocator.org or aarpworksearch.org. Also check out AARP’s National Employer Team at aarp.org/work; these employers are specifically looking to hire experienced workers.

Q: Karen: How is it that an employer can choose to hire you or fire you based on credit?

Use of credit history by employers to filter applicants is another tough barrier for many, especially if you have lost a job and struggled to pay credit card balances, bills or other household expenses. It would certainly seem that job-worthiness is not related credit-worthiness, but for some careers it is possible. Legislators in Ohio, like other states, have proposed a bill that would make discrimination by an employer because of the person’s credit history is an unlawful under Ohio Civil Rights Law. A summary of House Bill 340 is available at: http://www.legislature.state.oh.us/bills.cfm?ID=128_HB_340

Ask your question below and we will do our best to answer it!