USA Today had an article on how boomers are dropping out of the job market.

[Fumesucker]

17. I was talking about employment with a friend of mine in his mid 40s yesterday

We've had several conversations about it before but I really hit a nerve with him yesterday, he's still employed and has a pretty good job for this area.

I mentioned that most of the time when you interview with a larger company the person doing the hiring doesn't actually know anything about the job you are being interviewed for. My friend is a refrigeration mechanic and that rang a bell with him, evidently during the interview six years ago for his current job he had about five people sitting around reading him questions out of a textbook on refrigeration. The question, or answer rather that actually got him hired was "what is a BTU?", he rattled off the answer "the energy to raise one pound of water one degree F", he was the only person out of about twenty who interviewed for the job who knew the answer and the interviewees were all trained and certified refrigeration mechanics.

It made a real impression on him that I understood what was going on the hiring game to the point I anticipated what happened in his own job search. He paid much more attention to what I was telling him about his own future job prospects after that little revelation.