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SOMETIMES IT TAKES MORE than just a little self-
knowledge and chutzpah to get what you want. Some-
times it takes someone with an outside perspective to help
you see that you may be frustrated in pursuing a goal – not
because you can’t reach it but because it’s not the right one
in the first place.
In the case of Laura Warren, the right job turns out not to
be the mid-level marketing positions she was pursuing in a
$230 billion cosmetics industry dominated by Estee Lauder
and L’Oreal, against which she competed as an indepen-
dent. The right job comes out of charity and community
work, a path that feels to her like advocating for important
causes and looks to a career counselor like the background
and contacts of a successful lobbyist or political operative.
Chasing the wrong job was more a matter of momentum
and reluctance to take advantage of friends than it was a
conscious career decision. After nine years of fighting for
and running her own color-cosmetics business, Warren
knew she needed a job, so she went after one in the industry
in which she’d most recently worked.
Unfortunately, all her experience in cosmetics was in
working for herself, not for companies among whom, she
said, a 57-year-old woman isn’t the most sought-after com-
modity.
“Everything is fine in e-mail or on the phone until I go to
the interview,” said Warren of her job search and inability to
get past what appeared to be the refusal of industry recruit-
ers or hiring managers to consider a candidate who is older
than the one they might have expected.
“If [the interviewer] is someone younger than I am, 38 or
40 maybe, then it’s an issue,” she said. “If they’re younger
than that, they just have no time for you. They seem to be
following a formula, and if you don’t fit, it’s hard to talk
your way through that barrier. They’re not interested in a
history of success as much as they are a profile.”
But was it really her age that was working against her? Or
did the problem lie in the way she was