I'm nearly 60 and want to leave my dull job for the student travel industry

I will be 60 next year and, like a lot of women of my generation, I don't look or "feel" my age. I have been working in the education sector for 10 years, mostly as a school librarian. Like many people who work in a school I feel undervalued and overworked for the salary I receive. I would love a change of direction, the opportunity to go back to the student travel industry - an area I worked in 20 years ago.

Bearing in mind my ago and what I perceive is an increasingly ageist society and workplace, do you think it is worth putting myself "out there"? I have sent my CV to a couple of student travel companies but have had no response. I know I need to seek professional advice about revising my CV and covering letter (although I think both look great), but at my age do I stay vaguely unfulfilled and demoralized for the next six or seven years working full time, or go for it? By the way, I can't take a a cut in salary, so going part time or doing fewer hours is not an option.

Without any question you should go for it... but you need to go about it in a particularly thoughtful way. There are very few organisations that don't employ greatly valued members of staff aged well over 60. But few of them, of course, were taken on at that age or even 10 years earlier - they are almost all "old-timers", employees who have served the same company well for a decade or more. Over that time they have proved they have invaluable experience and are resourceful enough to deal confidently with familiar events. That few 60-year-olds are recruited can certainly be seen as ageist - and of course it is - but it's also a reflection of the fact that people of different ages can bring different aptitudes to the same job.

I go into this at such length because it has a direct bearing on how you should plan your strategy to re-enter the student travel industry. You must see yourself not in direct competition with 25-year-olds, but as being different and in certain respects better qualified. 

You say that you've already sent your CV to a couple of companies with no success. Until you present yourself not as just another applicant (who happens to be 60) but as an individual of unusual interest, I suspect you're likely to get the same response. The first thing you must do, if you have any remaining contacts with such companies, however faded they may be, is to refresh them. If there are people still working there who may remember you, make yourself known. That will immediately single you out.

Then give much thought to your covering letter. Don't disguise your passion for the student travel business. Make your letters quite specific for each company. Show that you know their work. Include anything that makes it clear that much of your knowledge and enthusiasm is timeless. In other words, work on the basis that a sensible company will be interested in taking you on because you're 60 - not despite it.

Readers say

- Times have changed phenomenally since you last worked in the travel industry - the technology, the expectations of consumers, even the fundamental business models will have changed beyond all recognition. Yet having received no reply after sending a couple of CVs you have jumped to the conclusion that "ageism" is at work. 

- Why focus on student travel? Why not try to tap into the grey pound? More 60+ people are looking for gap year jaunts, post retirement / pre-death-type travel opportunities. You could set up your own web-based business advising travelers and arranging personalized itineraries, drawing on your past experiences. 

- At 65, after 20+ years in social services, I applied for - and got - a job as a support worker with young people. I thought they would look at the date of birth and laugh!