You’re in the prime of your life, just a handful of years from retirement. So what do you do if your employer gives you a pink slip and sends you on your way?

It happened to Robert (his name has been changed for privacy), now 62, about a year and a half ago. “I thought, ‘I am not ready in any way to be without a job,’” he says. “I was too young to be retired, I wasn’t ready to be retired, and I had to start looking for something else. And it became apparent pretty quickly that another job wasn’t going to come along in a hurry.”

The hunt for a new job at 60 can be daunting. After all, your age and experience may mean you'd come with a fairly expensive price tag, making you a less attractive candidate to some employers than applicants in their 20s or 30s. Many employers don't leap to hire people in their 60s.

What to do? Financial advisers and career pros offer these seven pointers:

Gauge your financial situation. Before you dive into the want ads, “assess where you are financially,” says Sheryl Garrett, founder of Garrett Planning Network. “How long can you go without a paycheck before you’re broke? And what kind of income do you need in that next position?”

You may find that you no longer need to earn what you did at your last job.

Photo courtesy of 3DDock/Shutterstock.com

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