What a 48-Year-Old Job Hunter Taught Me About Finding Your North Star
Diary of a mid-life job hunter Dom Salomoni
When Dom Salomoni began job hunting at 48, he didn’t panic. He built a runway, defined a North Star, and redesigned work from the inside out.
There is a particular kind of silence that descends when a seasoned professional says,
“I’m looking for a job.”
It’s not the scrappy energy of your twenties.
It’s not the strategic leap of your thirties.
It’s heavier.
When Dom Salomoni found himself searching for a new role at 48 — after 25 years in one industry — he wasn’t chasing promotion. He wasn’t climbing. He was recalibrating.
Three young children. Four mortgages. A recent relocation. No established network.
And for the first time in his career, a flicker of doubt about future prospects.
What unfolded next wasn’t a frantic scramble. It was something far more interesting — and far more useful for anyone navigating midlife stuckness.
Here’s what Dom did differently.
1. He Gave Himself a Runway
Instead of panic-applying, Dom made a decision that most midlife professionals resist:
He created a six-month runway.
That wasn’t six months of drifting.
It was six months of intentional self-investment.
He promised himself he wouldn’t spiral about income for that defined period. He had a rainy-day fund. He understood his financial position. That clarity allowed him to think instead of react.
This is critical.
Midlife job search without a runway becomes emotional whiplash. Every silence feels catastrophic. Every rejection feels personal.
A runway creates psychological safety.
It says:
“I am allowed to design this properly.”
For professionals in their forties and fifties, that design thinking matters more than speed.
2. He Invested in Mindfulness — Not More Hustle
With more time available, Dom could have doubled down on productivity.
Instead, he chose balance.
He practised yoga. Meditation. Spent time on the water. Read again. Cultivated silence.
This wasn’t self-indulgence. It was nervous-system management.
Midlife job hunting can trigger identity shock. You’ve been competent for decades. Suddenly you’re applying. Waiting. Pitching yourself.
Without steadiness, it becomes destabilising.
Mindfulness helped Dom stay cool when the rollercoaster dipped — when a promising conversation stalled or an application disappeared into silence.
It also did something subtler: it helped him reconnect with who he was beyond his job title.
That reconnection is essential if you want to design work that matters.
3. He Created a North Star
This is the part I want every midlife professional to hear.
Dom didn’t start with roles. He started with criteria.
He asked:
What do I need from work now — beyond money?
What kind of leadership do I want?
What brand aligns with my values?
Do I want to be in the office daily?
What environment supports my wellbeing?
He called this his North Star.
It wasn’t aspirational fluff. It was a practical filter.
When conversations happened, he assessed them against his North Star.
Yes. Maybe. No.
That framework gave him confidence — especially at the “pointy end” of decision-making.
Notice the power shift.
Instead of wondering, “Will they choose me?”
He asked, “Do I choose this?”
For anyone feeling stuckness in midlife, this shift restores agency.
4. He Structured His Days So Rejection Didn’t Define Them
Dom limited job searching to two hours a day.
Two.
Not eight. Not all-consuming.
The rest of his day included:
Getting the kids to school
Exercise
Renovating their home
Connecting with friends
Why does this matter?
Because if job search becomes your entire identity, every outcome dictates your mood.
Dom measured his day by what he controlled — not by who called back.
That’s a profound psychological distinction.
It protects confidence. It preserves energy. It keeps you human.
5. He Followed the 50–25–25 Rule
Dom divided his effort like this:
50% through his network (and their networks)
25% speaking with peers in similar roles
25% direct applications
He described the final 25% — the cold applications — as “losing your soul.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Midlife professionals often over-index on sending CVs into digital voids. But connection, conversation, and curiosity create far more momentum.
The lesson?
Network with intention. Speak openly about what you’re exploring. Roll the dice on the next conversation.
Small experiments beat silent waiting.
6. He Updated His Definition of Success
Perhaps the most powerful shift wasn’t tactical — it was philosophical.
What Dom needed at 48 was different from what he needed at 38.
He wasn’t chasing status.
He wanted alignment.
Leadership quality.
Wellbeing.
A culture fit.
Midlife forces this reckoning.
If you cling to your younger definition of success, you’ll recreate the same treadmill in a different building.
But if you allow your criteria to evolve, something changes.
You stop scrambling.
You start designing.
The Bigger Insight
What strikes me about Dom’s experience isn’t that he “landed well.”
It’s that he approached the process with intention.
He normalised vulnerability. He asked trusted people what they saw in him. He invested in steadiness before momentum.
That combination — clarity, structure, and self-awareness — transforms a midlife job hunt from crisis to design.
For many professionals between 40 and 65, stuckness isn’t about competence. It’s about misalignment.
And misalignment cannot be solved with speed.
It requires:
A runway
A North Star
Honest reflection about Superpowers and Kryptonite
Small experiments
A willingness to redefine success
Midlife job search isn’t just about getting hired.
It’s about designing work you could do for a very long time.
Work that matters.
Work that feels like yours.
And perhaps most importantly — work that brings joy back into your days.
Speaker Links
Connect with Dom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-salomoni-1544b16/
Next Steps:
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30-minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you down. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy-at-work redesign.
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Lucia Knight: Let's face it, searching for a new role is rarely a joyful experience, eh? But when children, mortgages, and networks that haven't been invested in for years are added into the mix, it can be really tough. Most people don't like to talk about it, but Dom Salomoni is different. I was absolutely delighted when he agreed to share some of his valuable takeaways from his first time looking for a new role in 25 years.
What I know for sure is that most of us will experience the midlife job hunt. So tune in to Dom's really helpful and practical recommendations. You may not need them now, but log them for another time in future when you might. Let's dive in.
With 25 years experience in one industry, last year you found yourself searching for a new role for the first time. Can you tell me about that experience? Yeah.
[00:01:00] The Panic: 3 Kids, 4 Mortgages, No Network
Dom Salomoni: So I found myself in this scenario, 25 years in recruitment 12 months in Sydney going, Oh my God, I've got three young children and four mortgages.
And I need a job and I've got no network.
For the first time in my life, I was worried about my future job prospects, to be honest. I never considered my age ever until that point. And I was 48.
Lucia Knight: So this is an experience that the listener who is likely to be a mid-career professional may not have experienced this, but it is exceedingly likely they will.
[00:01:36] The 6-Month Runway Strategy
Lucia Knight: So tell me some of the things that you did, that you invested time in, that you felt helped you deal with it and ultimately helped you find the next role.
Dom Salomoni: So the things I did, so I'm not sure I actually did it logically in this order, but when I reflected on how I worked through it, this is what came through.
I allowed myself six months of self investment. I probably recognized I needed a break. Cause we spent two years settling the family and it was settling your whole family in a new country and everything, all the change that goes with that.
I went, okay, I'm going to have some time off. I want to learn something new. Be more non professional because I've spent 25 years doing what I do. I'm going to invest some time doing something different. I'm going to spend some time doing the things I actually want to do to create this Dom for Work v2. 0. So I then I worked out my runway right to find a new role, which was six months.
I promise myself. I wouldn't worry about not having a role for six months. Because of course we all worry about not working and not having income.
I've got a rainy day fund. So it wasn't about paying the bills tomorrow, but it was about allowing myself the space to think effectively. To breathe emotionally and just to be more fun and nicer to be around with my kids.
What I also did, which my wife told me to do was I sought counsel from people who knew me personally and professionally and said, what do you think I'd be good at? And what's your view on what I should maybe do moving forward?
[00:03:05] Mindfulness Over Hustle
Dom Salomoni: And I also worked on mindfulness. I've spent my life exercising, running or riding my bike. So rather than running and riding my bike more because I had more time, it was about what do I do to balance myself out? So how do I add more yang to my yin? Okay, and not just ride more and run more.
Lucia Knight: So what did you do?
Dom Salomoni: I kind of went, okay, I've got six months.
I will focus on one thing a month and I'll do one thing that's related to mindfulness. So I did yoga, meditation, spending time in the water, like I'm on a paddleboard or on a surfboard. I bought a fishing rod, but didn't really fish too much. And I read, I read again. So it was about cultivating silence to quote from Ryan Holiday. silence in my life to just to go slower.
Lucia Knight: And what difference did that make?
Dom Salomoni: There were two things. I really enjoyed learning something new and something different. It also meant that, I was probably better prepared to go into the journey to get on this job search journey to get on the spaceship and just more balanced around looking for a role, fundamentally.
I think the mindfulness bit helped me stay cool and calm if I'd had a bit of a tough day on the job search stuff.
Lucia Knight: Okay, so that, that makes me think. So you prepared yourself for something you knew that was going to be tough. But you prepared yourself mentally for the whole journey. So job hunting mid career, like it's tough. Yeah. With children, mortgages and then a limited network. It feels like a roller coaster as you've described it.
[00:04:49] Staying Calm When It Gets Tough
Lucia Knight: But how did you keep going when the going got tough?
Dom Salomoni: so the mindfulness was really helpful. So I looked at the journey in the runway and said, how long have I been doing this? And if it was less than six months, I just went, okay, I don't need to worry. Okay. I promised myself. I'm not going to worry until six months in. I reminded myself to enjoy the time with my kids and myself because it just doesn't happen very often.
I looked for the small wins. So a good discussion, a nice thanks, but no thanks, an interview request, but also I would be proactive. If it was a tough day, I go I'm going to try and take control and make some proactive approaches to people because I felt like I was taking control.
And then the mindfulness bit really helped.
[00:05:35] Create Your North Star
Lucia Knight: Good. So if you could give one piece of advice to someone who is about to enter a job search, who is in a job search, or who just knows that sometime in the future, they're going to hit a midlife job search. Just give us one big piece of advice or multiple, but just give them one piece of advice.
Dom Salomoni: I'm going to say create your north star. Post laying the foundations, I created my North star.
Everyone knows what a North star is, right? It's something to aim for.
So I kind of went, what can I do? What do I want to do? What do I need from my life right now beyond money?
What I need right now is different from what I needed 10 years ago. Because I'm at a different stage of my career.
I needed a good brand. I needed good leadership. I needed flexible working. I wanted to go to the office every day. I wanted a place that focused on your wellbeing.
And that was my North star.
And then I then assessed a company culture to work out if it was right for me. I created a target list of companies to approach myself. And then when conversations were happening, I then referenced those conversations and how they went against my North Star. And I went, yes, maybe, or no.
So I had a a North Star, a flag in the ground to go, I think this organization, this culture, this business, ultimately this role is right for me, or it isn't. And it gave me the confidence to say no to things or be comfortable in my decision when It was getting to the pointy end of the decision making.
And that, I think that's the bit I found really important. And the other bit around, around that was I created an action plan, right? So I went, I've created my North star, but what do I do with it? Okay.
Cause it's all how you're going to execute. So I went, okay, I'm going to network every day. So I had a coffee every day with either one of one of my friends or someone in my professional network.
I explained what I was doing, why I was doing it.
Lucia Knight: Mm-Hmm.Are they hiring
Dom Salomoni: f
For their team? Is that company hiring or is it anyone they can connect me to? And I then rolled the dice onto the next conversation.
[00:07:55] The 50-25-25 Job Search Rule
Dom Salomoni: I created this thing called like the 50, 25, 25 rule. So 50 percent of my job search is my network or my network's network.
25 percent of my job search is talking to people like me. Okay. 25 percent of my job search is LinkedIn and losing your soul, making direct applications and getting nothing back.
Lucia Knight: Soul sucking cold job applications. Love it. And that worked in the end for you.
Dom Salomoni: That worked for me. The other bit that I did to it that I think is really important is
[00:08:27] The 2-Hour Daily Limit
Dom Salomoni: I looked for a job maximum two hours a day. That was it. Okay. And I created a structure around my day that went as simple as get up, get the kids to school. Exercise. Look for a job. And work on our renovators delight of a house.
So when I was asked how my day was, I would reflect and instead of going, I didn't get an interview or the meeting didn't go well, or I've been looking at job boards for eight hours a day. I went job search piece wasn't great, but I had a really good chat with Alex on the way to school.
I did a 10k in a time that I wanted to do it in. Or I've worked on the garden. So I went these three things that are in my control, big ticks, the one thing out of my control wasn't so good. And then at the end of the day, I just assessed it and went, how was my day?
Um,
Lucia Knight: Super, super valuable. . If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Life Satisfaction Assessment. It's a 30 minute program where I guide you through a deep dive into 10 areas of your life to assess what's bringing you joy and what's bringing you time. I call it Derailed and it's a fabulous place to begin a joy at work redesign.
