‘I THOUGHT THAT IT WOULD BE EASY TO GET BACK'

Jacqui Deevoy, 58, is a writer from London. Believe it or not, when I was in my 20s, 30s and even 40s, I found checking out job vacancies and going for interviews fun and exciting. Full of confidence, I used to boast to friends that I could get any job I wanted and had a zero-fail rate with interviews. That all changed when I hit 50, though. And these days, it’s no fun at all.

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Six years ago, after being self-employed for more than a decade, I decided that getting a steady job with a regular salary would be less stressful. Being freelance had become financially unpredictable, and not being able to pay the bills for several months in a row, on a regular basis, was making me anxious.

So I started looking for a full-time position. ‘How hard could it be?’ I wondered, naively. My four kids – then aged 26, 20, 18 and 16 – had flown the nest and I was free from any responsibility at home. I thought that it would be easy to get back into the workplace, but I was in for a shock.