Unemployed at the age of 40, is there any job to do besides delivering takeout food?

A while ago, because of the epidemic, one of my relatives was laid off at the age of 40. He called me, and the tone on the phone was very low. "I am 40 years old and have no education and culture. Suddenly I lost my job. What else can I do besides running Didi or delivering takeout? "

I understand the feelings of my loved ones. Middle-aged people in the workplace are old and young. Once they lose their jobs, the sky seems to be falling.

On this topic, I want to talk about some of my own views for your reference only.

1. Re-employment of middle-aged people needs to consider the effect of "spreading the weak and supplementing the weak" in the workplace. Mr. Wang Dongyue spent half his life creating his own philosophical system and writing the book The General Theory of Everything, which some friends may have read. The whole book is only to demonstrate a gentleman's original principle-gradual compensation effect.

The so-called "weak compensation" means that the survival intensity of all things in the world and later species (the degree of tenacious survival) is always decreasing, and the generation is weaker than the generation, so if you want to survive, you have to constantly find more supporting factors.

Take unemployment at the age of 40 as an example. In my twenties, my physical strength and energy are at their peak. I believe there is no problem whether I run Didi or deliver takeout.

After the age of 30 or even 40, people's physical strength and energy begin to decline continuously, which requires relying on other abilities or elements to make up for these deficiencies. This is also an effect of "gradually weakening compensation".

For some middle-aged people, it's true that you can take delivery at the age of 40, but anyone who has taken delivery knows that this job is very hard and every penny you earn is sweat!

At the age of 40, delivery can also make money. What about when you were 45? What about after 50? At that time, my body couldn't run, so what can I expect to make money?

Therefore, for middle-aged re-employment, I think we should recognize the effect of "weakening compensation" and look at the future career development from a developmental perspective.

Second, I am unemployed at the age of 40 and can do some more leveraged work. I have a friend named Lao Li, who is in his thirties (less than 40 years old). Unfortunately, he was laid off by the company.

Lao Li was once disheartened and felt that life was gloomy. Because I usually believe in Buddhism, I went to the temple to worship the Bodhisattva.

Later, I met an old monk in the temple and talked about his frustrated experience. The old monk advised him to look forward and cheer up again.

Lao Li was really cured. After a few months of unemployment, he and his friends partnered to open a cake shop. Lao Li used to work in a food factory, so he is very experienced in cake technology. Because the shop is his hope, he spent a lot of time to innovate some new varieties.

I didn't expect their customers to keep coming soon after the cake shop opened. Everyone likes to eat the cakes sold by Lao Li, which are not only varied in variety, but also delicious.

A few years later, Lao Li opened a chain cake shop and hired many employees, which was also considered a "small entrepreneur".

Lao Li's experience made me very emotional. On the one hand, he can be inspired by the master and adjust his mentality. On the other hand, I think his career orientation is very good at this stage of middle-aged entrepreneurship.

That is, I didn't want to do a job that depends more on physical strength and time, but chose a career that uses technical expertise and can innovate constantly.

Back to this topic, I think 40-year-old unemployed friends should not be intimidated by the pressure of life. When they are re-employed, they need to evaluate the magnifying effect of their future jobs. I call it "leverage effect", that is, they can rely more on their own technical ability and innovation ability to achieve a profitable career and make your life full of vitality, and it is not easy to encounter bottlenecks or even be eliminated.

Unemployed in their thirties and forties, trying to engage in jobs with transferable past experience. At the age of 40, some people are disheartened by their past work experience and want to give up and start over.

From the perspective of career planning, this is not undesirable, but the personal "involvement investment model" tells us that career has costs, including your time cost, training cost, resource cost and so on.

The so-called interlacing is like a mountain, and it is difficult to transform a completely unfamiliar career. But as long as there is an opportunity, I suggest you explore new job opportunities related to past experience that can be migrated.

For example, my friend Lao Li, who used to be a skilled worker in a food factory, can already make cakes, so the experience of opening a cake shop after unemployment is positively related. Later, he was able to run a chain store, which was also inseparable from the deep cultivation and accumulation in this industry for so many years.

It is a great pity that taking delivery and running Didi can really make money, but it may have nothing to do with your previous experience.

Therefore, thinking about the direction of new work can be considered from the perspective of migration. For example, people who used to do copywriting can transform into self-media operations, and friends who used to do offline sales can also consider doing live broadcasts with goods.

In short, those sunk resources need to be cherished, and don't give up easily unless you have to.

Written at the end, these are my views on this topic, hoping to inspire everyone.

Authors: Governor Ding, original author of Baijiahao, senior human resource manager, national second-level psychological counselor, senior career planner and enterprise management consultant. Codewords are not easy. If you like me, please give me a compliment. Thank you!