Resilience: the ability to cope with setbacks

Resilience is the ability to face setbacks, unforeseen events, obstacles and failures without allowing them to dominate, derail or destroy your life. It is not about being unaffected by stress or pressure; it is about recognising when you are affected by it and having coping strategies to manage it. Your levels of resilience can be increased and improved; resilience is not a static quality.

In this article we look at resilience in the context of job hunting:

• why maintaining good levels of resilience will help you in your job search and future career
• how to develop resilience
• the professions in which resilience is particularly valuable
• how your resilience could be assessed in applications, interviews and assessment days
• how you can demonstrate resilience during the recruitment process.

Why is resilience an important skill to cultivate?

Well, to state the obvious, higher levels of resilience are better for your overall emotional and mental welfare.

Starting your ‘first proper job’ is a time of great change and it is likely that you will have huge challenges to deal with, which could range from learning from mistakes at work to relocating to a new area or trying to impress your boss while working remotely. Although you will receive training on the job and many employers run stress management or resilience workshops and offer mentors, these challenges will have less of a negative effect on you if you have already enlarged your ‘inner pool’ of resilience.

Candidates who have higher levels of resilience are likely to have higher levels of problem-solving skills , self-awareness, adaptability and emotional intelligence . These qualities are attractive to recruiters.

It’s also true, however, that job hunting itself requires high levels of resilience. Even in good economic times, it is rare for a candidate to be offered the first and only graduate job they’ve applied for. Only resilience and self-belief will ensure that you continue to apply.

How to become more resilient

Developing your resilience is a very personal thing; there is no one-size-fits-all technique. You will need to experiment to find what works for you. You can find a range of resources online and through your university.

If you are not sure where to start finding what works for you, consider:

• seeing if your university runs any resilience or stress awareness training days
• attending as many virtual careers workshops run by your careers service as possible: as one careers adviser told us, it allows you to try something out and fail at it within a safe environment
• reviewing your life and thinking about times when things went well and not so well. Identify how you responded: what helpful or unhelpful actions did you take? What have you learned about yourself?
• remembering everything you have achieved so far to date: it can help bolster a positive, ‘can do’ outlook
• identifying successful strategies to keep calm and investigating problem-solving techniques (some people find mindfulness, meditation and positive visualisations helpful, while others don't).

You may also find our article, co-written with the mental health charity Student Minds, on managing stress and your job hunt helpful.

Which employers and industries particularly seek resilience in candidates?

Unsurprisingly, those employers that particularly want resilience tend to be in those sectors with higher levels of stress and longer hours – for example in:

• the medical/healthcare professions and other frontline public sector roles
• investment banking
• law
• sales
• the charity and not-for-profit sector
• retail
• hospitality and event management
• logistics .

It is also extremely likely to turn up in job descriptions for any graduate management role. However, most jobs involve dealing with some kind of pressure, so it would be reasonable to expect your resilience to be assessed during any recruitment process.

How do graduate recruiters assess resilience during the recruitment process?

It is possible that you will be asked a question about resilience in the application form – one law firm has previously asked ‘Describe an occasion when you found yourself dealing with an unexpected situation. How did you demonstrate your resilience?’ – but it is more likely to be assessed during online tests and at assessment centres and during interviews.

How you deal with challenges and setbacks may be assessed via an online situational judgement test or an ‘immersive video experience’ – in both cases, you will be given a scenario ( such as a client raising a complaint ) and asked how you would respond. Your resilience may also be assessed via a games-based recruitment exercise , although they are more likely to be explicitly testing your persistence and drive than your resilience per say.

Assessment days involve stepping into the unknown and so they are by their very nature a test of your resilience, even though recruiters usually go out of their way to be friendly. How you deal with the unknown may be further tested in case study exercises . For example, you may be given a scenario and then, a few minutes later, you might be given some new information that could alter your decisions.

Interview questions that are designed to assess your resilience include:

• How do you deal with setbacks?
• How do you cope with pressure?
• What has been your biggest failure to date and how did you deal with it?
• Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a major crisis.
• Describe a time when something didn’t work out as well as you’d hoped. What did you do and what did you learn from it?
• Tell me about a time when you worked with someone you didn’t agree with.
• How would you respond if you received negative feedback from your manager?

How to demonstrate your resilience in the recruitment process

To demonstrate your resilience in a recruitment situation, you will need to:

• be aware of how you react to stressful situations and call upon the constructive strategies that help you manage them (such as the ones listed above)
• get as much practise as possible beforehand – access our links to free practice online ability tests and book to attend any mock interviews, mock assessment days and employability workshops run by your careers service.

You are not expected to be superhuman

Just to re-emphasise: you are not expected to be perfect and to never be affected by stress or by setbacks, either as a student or as an employee. One of the best actions you can take is to know when to ask for help.