This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Siobhan MacDermott, a 56-year-old tech founder based in Menlo Park, California. It's been edited for length and clarity.

I've never been underqualified for any job that I've applied to.

I was vice chair at Bank of America and principal at EY. I held senior roles in cybersecurity at AVG and McAfee. I've sat in boardrooms with Fortune 500 CEOs, advised governments, and built practices from scratch.

Then, in early 2024, when I was 54, I had to relocate from New York City to California for family reasons, leaving the management consulting job I'd held as a partner at The Consello Group. I didn't anticipate what could happen when someone tries to re-enter the institutional world in their 50s — particularly as a woman in a career space that doesn't fit neatly into a job description.

The most surprising barrier has been the gap between what I've actually done and what the market knows how to categorize. I'm worried because I'm not sure where the economy is heading, but I'm an absolute eternal optimist.

I'm not going to accept anything other than staying hopeful.

I felt like my job application was going into the ether

It's been frustrating to watch organizations that desperately need exactly what I've built not hire me.

When I started my job search, I reached out to my network to try to figure out what I could do, who'd vouch for me, and where open positions were. A lot of senior roles were being downsized, but I had a lot of people who initially wanted to help me find something.

The strategies that were a complete waste of time were LinkedIn Easy Apply, recruiter calls that went nowhere, and any process that involved a 45-minute competency-based interview with someone who'd never heard of the big companies I've worked for.

I spent the better portion of every day for over a year applying and looking for jobs. I obsessively searched on LinkedIn for new positions, applying over and over again on the site, company websites, emails, and more, but getting nowhere.

I sent out countless résumés and barely got any responses. These are jobs that I know I'm qualified or overqualified to do, but sometimes I didn't even get the courtesy of the automated "thank you for applying" response.

It was like my application went into the ether. I'd try to find the head of HR for these companies on LinkedIn and reach out to them because I wanted the feedback.

I started trying to think of interesting ways to get attention

The strategy that worked the best during my job search was bypassing HR entirely and using direct outreach to CEOs and board members.

I'd send them letters not even related to a job, but more of an observation of their company to get their attention. I tried to be crafty, saying, "Based on my external assessment of your company, here are some things that I think you should be doing as you think through your next quarter."

Reaching out to CEOs got me in the door, but then they'd send me down to somebody who was pretty junior who'd say, "You're overqualified for this job." They'd courtesy interview me because they'd been told to, but it didn't go beyond that.

Sometimes a CEO would send me to HR, and HR would look at my skill set and say, "It doesn't quite match."

That happened quite a few times.

I adjusted my LinkedIn profile to get a better response, and that helped

I changed my gender to male and back to female a bunch of times to see if it made a difference — I didn't change my pronouns, just my actual gender. I felt like I had more responses on LinkedIn being thought to be male than female.

I also think being in Silicon Valley, you age out a lot faster than you do in other parts of the US, and it's definitely a highly male- dominated space. I had those two things working against me from the get-go.

So I removed the first six years of my career from my work experience on LinkedIn, and I took the dates off of my degrees so that people couldn't tell my age. This made me seem seven to 10 years younger, potentially. Once I took those dates off, I felt like I got more engagement on the site.

My job search in Silicon Valley went nowhere, so I decided to pivot and launch my own venture

I started my company out of necessity, and also out of intellectual boredom. I felt like my brain was starting to rot.

It happened about a year into job searching, when I started feeling financial pressure and frustration. I didn't want my full-time job to be looking for a job. My search wasn't looking like it was going anywhere in the foreseeable future, especially out in Silicon Valley. If you're a computer scientist or an engineer, there are jobs available, but I couldn't find a lot out here not in that space.

I started thinking, what am I good at? What do I know? What are all the pieces that I could put together? What problem can I identify that needs to be solved? That came together pretty quickly, and I launched two companies — Khaos Holdings, a strategic risk-intelligence company, and TeenAegis, a child-safety intelligence business, in January.

We're raising capital, and if the capital comes in, that will be the end of my job search. If the capital doesn't come in, then I'll keep searching — but I've decided that whatever I do will be adjacent to the problem I'm trying to solve now.

One good thing came out of the 2 years since my last job

Being out of work for two years shifted my retirement timeline eight to 10 years from digging into savings. However, since my job search started, I've really homed in on what I want to do with the rest of my career.

The journey I went on was a little bit of a midlife crisis. I asked myself, "What's my purpose in life?" as opposed to "What job do I want to have?" and then identified what skill set could bring me to that.

What led me to where I am was really thinking through questions like: What are all the issues that matter to me? What legacy do I want to leave? How do I want to think about my future for the next 10 or 15 years? How do I want to show up every day?

In the beginning, I was going to apply to anything that I could qualify for that would get me some money. Now I'm not going to do that because I don't think that's going to actually be fulfilling or make me happy. My sense of stability has required a deliberate reframe — from "security comes from a salary" to "security comes from what I've built and what I know."

I'm determined to make this work, but I also realize it may not

The hardest thing is maintaining a positive attitude day after day. If my company doesn't work out, then it's not like I can stop trying.

Taking mental health breaks is important because it's overwhelming, lonely, and hard. You lose your sense of self-worth when you're in this position; people look at you like, "Oh, you're the person who's still looking for a job." So it's hard to continue to put yourself out there.

Still, I do believe there's light at the end of the tunnel. It's just the question of how long the tunnel is.

Do you have a story to share about navigating your career in your 50s? If so, please reach out to the editor, Manseen Logan, at mlogan@businessinsider.com.

• Mihirkant Upadhyaya has a Ph.D. and more than 10 years of experience at Intel.
• But at age 41, he embarked on gaining another degree to level up in his career.
• Upadhyaya says that doing an MBA equips him with skills that AI lacks.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mihirkant Upadhyaya, 42, who works at Intel and lives in Oregon. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment and education.

After studying computer engineering for my bachelor's, I pivoted into physics.

Two master's degrees and a Ph.D. in nanoscale science and engineering later, I got my dream job in the semiconductor industry at Intel in 2015.

As my career evolved, I realized I also wanted to do an MBA to step up my game.

My Ph.D. gave me relevant skills to take on the workforce

During my Ph.D., I focused on a semiconductor manufacturing technology called EUV lithography. I was excited to work at Intel because it does both chip design and manufacturing, so I knew I'd get a good overview of the chip-making process.

You don't need a Ph.D. to work in semiconductors, as there are so many areas outside the lab you can work in, like finance and legal.

On a personal level, though, having a Ph.D. helped me feel prepared to step into the workforce. It gave me discipline and the ability to be comfortable with ambiguity. My research mindset and technical background gave me the confidence to take ownership of outcomes and tasks.

There were definitely moments where I had self-doubt doing a Ph.D. You watch your peers go on to earn big bucks after their bachelor's and master's while you live on a modest stipend. However, the experience shaped me into who I am. I'd say I'm more patient, sharper, and more resilient.

I reached a stage where I felt I needed more education to thrive in my job

After about five years in research and development at Intel, I moved into supply chain roles, which have involved managing relationships and negotiating contracts. At this point, I realized I was missing certain skills.

My current role has a greater emphasis on executive communication and financial analysis. When I presented to an executive team, my manager had to step in on a number of occasions to get the room to respond, making what I was saying more high-level using business-driven terms. I also didn't quite understand certain things when I worked with the finance teams on contract negotiations.

To step up my game, I started a two-year hybrid MBA course in September 2025, alongside my full-time job. It was energizing to get back to the classroom at age 41.

I take one week off a quarter to do in-person sessions, and the rest of the time I'm doing online learning three days a week. My company is partly funding this, which is useful since MBAs can carry a $100,000 price tag.

By the time I've finished my MBA, I'll have done nine years of postgraduate study, investing an estimated $100,000 into that education, aside from scholarships and tuition waivers. Without question, it's been worth it. I haven't pursued the degrees to accumulate credentials, but to serve my career at various stages of my life. The MBA is addressing a concrete skills gap I identified after years in my industry.

I believe higher education is helping me become more irreplaceable in the age of AI

The AI boom made me take a hard look at what I bring to the table. I saw that some of what I did could eventually be automated. That realization was humbling.

Instead of trying to compete with what AI is already good at, I wanted to strengthen the areas where I knew it fell short. AI is great at processing and analyzing information. It has scale and speed, but it lacks the truly insightful judgment that a person can gain from years of learning a skill.

In my previous role at Intel, I found that AI couldn't tell me how to troubleshoot issues involving new or custom-made equipment because the context was so unique to my situation.

Meanwhile, in my current role, while AI could probably help me generate financial models, it can't read the room, build relationships, or have synergy with another person. My MBA course benefits me in this regard because we do lots of group activities, even online through Zoom, where we can interact with each other.

I think that in the age of AI, finding a field you really care about, becoming an expert in it, and staying curious to keep learning can help you become irreplaceable.

Intel declined to comment in response to a request from Business Insider.