After years in management, a frustrating job search has Karen Del’Olio rethinking what she wants next.
In April, the 59-year-old was furloughed from her role as a research program manager at an academic institution in Massachusetts after a sponsor pulled funding from the project she led. Despite beginning her search in April and applying to dozens of jobs, she said she didn’t land any interviews beyond an initial recruiter call during the first four months of her search. While she’s since secured two interviews past the recruiter stage, she’s still looking for an offer.
“I just get recruiters who say they’re going to send the résumé on, and then I never hear back — I get ghosted,” she said.
Her furlough is set to end in October, and Del’Olio said she doesn’t expect to be rehired — in part because recent funding cuts from the National Institutes of Health. She was raised to keep a rainy day fund, and for now, those savings have helped her cover expenses. But she’s burning through them quickly, and if her job search stretches much longer, she worries her financial situation could become unstable. While she applied for unemployment benefits in May, she said she wasn’t approved until August — at which point she received retroactive payments.
Financial concerns are one reason she’s begun exploring roles outside the management positions she initially targeted. And as her search continues, she’s starting to believe the shift might be for the best — that the downsides of management may outweigh the benefits, even with the higher pay.
“It doesn’t have to be in management; though, preferably, that’s the pay scale that I’m looking for,” she said of her next job. “I’m starting to get excited about not managing people.”
Del’Olio’s experience reflects a broader shift in the US labor market that’s made it challenging for workers in managerial positions to find jobs. A number of major corporations, including Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Walmart, have cut manager roles in recent years.
It’s not just big businesses. Gusto, a payroll and benefits platform for small and medium-sized businesses, found that manager firings and layoffs by businesses on the platform have risen 66% between January 2022 and September 2024 for those ages 45 to 54 — and more than 400% for those ages 35 to 44.
This trend, dubbed the Great Flattening, reflects a broader push to reduce costs and bureaucracy, moves business leaders say will make their organizations more efficient. But for some laid-off managers, finding new employment has been difficult. Amid economic uncertainty, ranging from tariffs to the early impacts of AI adoption, US businesses are hiring at nearly the slowest pace in more than a decade.
The pros and cons of management positions
Del’Olio believes she’s part of a generation of workers in their 50s and early 60s who are often overlooked in today’s job market. She feels they’re caught in a gap — not old enough to retire, but navigating a workplace that’s rapidly evolving, especially with the rise of AI.
She worries that many job seekers in this age group — many of whom are targeting management roles — may be at a disadvantage as companies prioritize younger, lower-cost workers perceived as more tech-savvy. In addition to needing jobs to continue building retirement savings, many also rely on employment for medical insurance, since Medicare coverage typically doesn’t begin until age 65.
Given these circumstances, Del’Olio said she’s torn between focusing her job search on higher-paying manager-level jobs that match her experience, and pursuing lower-level roles she might enjoy more — and that could be easier to land.
Del’Olio said she appreciated many aspects of being a manager. She liked establishing strategies, aligning teams toward a shared vision, mentoring others, and designing systems and programs. Her role also gave her broad visibility and allowed her to collaborate across departments. In her job search, she’s applied to several clinical research and program management roles in the healthcare sector that she believes would build on her past leadership experience.
However, there were also downsides that have made her reconsider management. Administrative tasks — like performance reviews and handling team turnover — were time-consuming. She also found it difficult to juggle competing priorities and navigate interpersonal conflicts among coworkers, all while staying accountable for her team’s performance. She added that she sometimes wished she could spend less time “putting out fires” and working to keep team morale positive.
In recent months, Del’Olio has spent more time exploring non-managerial roles that allow for more creativity, innovation, and work-life balance — without the day-to-day demands of managing a team. She said she’s especially drawn to roles related to health communications, marketing and branding, content development, digital health, and quality improvement.
“I feel I can be more creative and innovative in non-managerial positions,” she said. “I’d rather connect people and build relationships and not manage their tasks.”
Trying to stay a step ahead of a changing job market
Del’Olio said her job search strategies have included customizing her résumé for each position and reaching out to recruiters on LinkedIn. She’s also used ChatGPT to help revise her résumé, hoping it will suggest “modern” terms that are more likely to be recognized by applicant tracking systems. She also tries to include relevant language from the job description in her résumé.
“If you don’t match the language specifically, you may get a low score through that AI-powered screening process,” she said. “I’ve even gotten an automatic decline within an hour.”
Del’Olio said she’s also concerned that her age may be working against her. Even if she doesn’t list her birth date in an application, she suspects AI hiring systems can estimate her age based on the length of her work history, which could be hurting her chances. To try to counter this, she’s removed the dates from her degrees and some of her past jobs.
In the coming months, Del’Olio said she plans to learn more about data management and AI technologies to make herself more marketable to employers. She said she intends to join some AI-focused groups on LinkedIn and pursue some online AI certifications.
“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” she said, referencing the potential for AI to negatively impact employment in certain sectors.
If her search continues to stall, Del’Olio said she may have to expand it even further — to any role that simply offers a paycheck. In the meantime, she’s trying to keep up with a job market that feels like it’s constantly shifting.
“I think the entire world of work has changed,” she said. “The way that we hire; the way that we manage; the way that we promote.”
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