In such a competitive market, personal resilience isn’t just a ‘nice to have’, it’s an essential soft skill that can determine whether people achieve both their own career goals and those of their organisation.
In short, personal resilience can be defined as: ‘The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties’. Difficulties are inevitable, from your first job application to the pinnacle of your career. Those who can recover, even thrive, in the wake of difficulties usually share a number of qualities, including emotional awareness and control, self-belief, the ability to adapt and stay optimistic, and, what we’d say is probably most important, perseverance.
From our experience, organisations often rank these qualities over and above academic qualifications – thus job seekers who demonstrate resilience will usually have a strong competitive advantage.
As well as helping you prepare for the next one, failure at interview sometimes presents an opportunity to make a change to your career path. In one of our recent Q&As with leaders in Wales, Gareth Way told us about the first time his life went ‘off-script’ when he was rejected from a PGCE interview. Having had a long-standing ambition to become a PE teacher, Gareth had to re-evaluate what he wanted to do – he’s now Chief HR Officer for Creditsafe and says: “A role in HR presented me with an opportunity to help people develop the careers they wanted.” This is a great example of how being resilient can sometimes lead to welcome success.
But it doesn’t just help if you’re looking for a job, resilience is also vital if you’re seeking to progress with your current employer. Hannah Heath was made Finance Director of JoJo Maman Bébé by the age of 30 and says: “I had to fight for my role here; there was a perception I was too young, but I had already proven I was capable of the job and managed to convince the board I was ready.”
Hannah credits her teachers, family and early employers PwC and HBOS for their encouragement, which no doubt had a great impact on building her personal resilience. But not everyone is fortunate to have external support from an early age. The good news is that resilience can be developed, and we support many aspiring managers and leaders to build theirs.
Personal resilience can also be incredibly valuable when you’re unexpectedly facing unemployment. Rob Baker, who works for the University of South Wales, says: “In 2000 my post was made redundant. I wanted to stay in HR, so I got a job with what was then the University of Glamorgan as a temporary HR Officer. It was a scary and very insecure time, but things went well. I’m now their Director of HR.”
One of the reasons personal resilience is such a vital ingredient for reaching the top, comes down to the nature of the business world; change and challenge are constant in the modern market, and organisations depend on resilient leaders to make their businesses resilient in light of it.
Resilience has a big impact on those around you, so by being optimistic, having confidence and staying calm, you’re more likely to motivate and better manage the performance of employees. Leaders who can do this, in spite of difficulties and set-backs, are more likely to lead their organisations to success.
As Winston Churchill said,
‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.’
And that, really, is the hallmark of personal resilience.
I felt Ita really understood my skills and experience and the service I received was great. I felt that Ita was invested in my future career and did everything she could to help me land my new role.
I’d have no problem recommending Ita and the Sitka team to anyone entering the job market. They made the whole process much easier for me.
Everything about Sitka’s approach is a breath of fresh air. I have worked with Sitka on both the candidate side and recruiter side and I have never had a better relationship with an agency. I trust them implicitly to provide a service that is above and beyond what you would expect a recruitment agency to do and I wouldn’t hesitate to use them again.
Sitka was honest all the way through and went above and beyond to make me feel prepared and ready for the interview. Everything went really smoothly and I had regular communication from Ita who made sure I knew everything I needed to along the way. I felt equally as important to the agency as the client and knew I could trust Sitka to represent me as a candidate.
I just want to say a big thank you to Ita for believing in me and being so supportive from the first LinkedIn message until I started my first week!
The whole recruitment process, led by Karen, was a really engaging and positive experience. I can honestly say it was the best interview I have ever had!
I was recommended Sitka by a mutual contact who thought Karen and Ita would understand our requirements and our organisation. I met with them and I definitely felt they were the right agency for us. The recruitment process was seamless, they made it very easy for me.
Karen was committed throughout my interview process as well as afterwards. You can see that she strives for excellence and has the utmost integrity.
Thanks very much for making a potentially stressful activity completely non-stressful!