Morris Litvak, CEO of Maturi, talks about the potential of the technology area to welcome professionals who want to change careers
Today, Morris Litvak, CEO of Maturi —Digital platform which brings job and training opportunities to those over 50 years old—, he is a social entrepreneur. But this is his second career.
The first was as a software engineer: with his father, he created an online hotel reservation system in the 1990s that was later sold to a company in Portugal. From then on, he began to rethink his path and realized that he needed to look for something beyond money.
“I really opened up and participated in a lot of things, talking to a lot of people”, he recalls. Morris did volunteer work at a nursing home and participated in charity events. startups and entrepreneurship until discovering that it was possible to make money and solve a problem in society: the employability of older people.
His story shows that if before the standard was to start and end your professional career in the same area of activity, now it is possible to choose to do something very different along the way. “We are living longer, so it will be increasingly common to rethink our careers, our lives, look for what makes the most sense and then change areas,” he says.
Could technology be a new path to this second career? He believes so — and that there is potential for entrepreneurship and the technology sector (two areas that Morris knows very well) to be viable options for those who want to make this move.
In conversation with the iFood News, the founder of Maturi talks about his change of field and shows how technology can open up paths for those, like him, who are looking for new professional opportunities.
The grandmother who inspired Maturi
Morris had two inspirations for his second career: volunteer work and his grandmother. “When my grandmother stopped working, at the age of 82, her health declined and she started to develop some illnesses. I connected this with the stories I heard from people who lived in the nursing home where I volunteered,” he explains.
That's how he became interested in the subject and realized that the growing older population found it very difficult to stay in the market. “People much younger than my grandmother, 50 to 60 years old, suffered what she suffered, not by choice, but because they couldn't get a job because of their age,” he says. Finding a place for these Brazilians was the purpose he embraced. “I thought, ‘here’s an opportunity.”
Are we going to normalize the second career?
If in the past it was not common to see people changing careers throughout their lives, today this movement is no longer so rare. “People open up to this because they realize it is possible. You can learn a new profession without necessarily going to college”, he comments.
Morris points out another factor that has accelerated this movement: the difficulty of finding a job in one's original career. “Then the person tries to do something else and starts to realize that it is possible”, adds the entrepreneur.
He himself started Maturi with almost zero investment. “I created a landing page in a free service, I put it on the air and used social media a lot”, he reveals. “People have the idea that entrepreneurship is opening a business that requires a lot of investment. It could be, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Opening your mind to technology
Another secret, says Morris, is to open your mind to technology. “It is essential for you to be able to test, validate, publicize and everything else. There is no way you can do any type of work today — especially entrepreneurship — without using technology.”
For him, the technology market has real potential to absorb people who want to change areas. After all, there are many job opportunities, especially in times of threat of a technological blackout. But he ponders: you have to really like the subject. “Most of the vacancies are for developers and programmers, and this is not for everyone, not everyone can relate.”
In addition to wanting to work in the area and being interested in the subject, you also need to train yourself so that the technology area can be a real chance for a second career. Therefore, Morris reinforces the need for training courses to also embrace age diversity, so that more profiles enter this market and help reduce the professional deficit in the sector. “Training programs need to be more inclusive so that older people also understand that this is for them.”
What would Maturi's CEO say to anyone who is thinking about changing careers, especially those who want to enter the IT field? “Have curiosity to learn and humility to know that, despite your experience, there will always be new things and you will need to ask for help.”
