Her resume-writing skills are probably sorely out of date. She needs to look at her resume like a website trying to get hits, with keywords. That’s the way HR departments scan through the mass of resumes they receive to cull them down enough to look at them individually. Sounds sort of silly and perhaps it is, but you’ve got to get over that first hurdle to even get that initial phone interview these days. If it’s beyond her, start researching resume writing services. Shouldn’t be more than a couple hundred dollars at most, including a LinkedIn profile. She’ll need one of those too, and start linking up with people in her industry, even former coworkers.
Thank you for your helpful advice. She is already working with a career counseling service which is helping her with her resume, among other things.
One problem my friend has is that she has been a legal secretary for 15 years or so. This career is dying out, at least in my neck of the woods. Lawyers these days have their own laptops, tablets and so on, so it’s easier for many of them to do much of the work secretaries used to do. So many firms have a glut of secretaries basically twiddling their thumbs all day, so they are ridding themselves of the excess staff. And while technically, it may be illegal, most firms will retain the younger employee who works cheap instead of the seasoned secretary who would command a higher salary.
My friend does have a degree in journalism, so she may have to parlay that degree into a whole new career — not necessarily journalism — maybe she can teach English or something? It might necessitate going back to college and taking some low level job for however long it takes to get the right education, but she may need to make a radical career change.
Whatever — she has a long road ahead of her and it’s become daunting. So she really needs all the encouragement she can get.