Colman Collins is the author of HOW TO SUCCEED IN YOUR FIRST JOB. Colman wrote this book to help recently qualifi ed graduates to navigate their way successfully from the world of college to the world of work. The book is based on his forty years experience, initially as a HR Director with two blue chip multinationals including Nortel Networks here in Galway and more recently as the owner and CEO of Collins McNicholas Recruitment & HR Services Group, which also has an offi ce in Galway.
This book is available in Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Kenny’s Bookshop, University College Galway Bookshop and online through buythebook.ie and amazon.
This is the fourth in a series of eight articles based on Colman’s book.
This week’s topic is: Learn to be resilient
Be resilient or learn to be resilient.
All of the fifty topics covered in my book are important but if I was to pick out one that I consider the key quality for a new employee it is resilience. Regardless of what kind of organisation you join and how successful you are, it is inevitable that you will experience many setbacks along the way. It is your ability to cope with these setbacks that will determine the trajectory of your career.
Build on the resilience that has got you to this point where you have secured your first job.
You have shown resilience in getting through college and in getting your first job, but your resilience will be subjected to much more intense and sustained scrutiny over the course of your working life. This will be particularly true if you are employed in a very demanding business and/or in a very competitive sector of the market.
Certain company cultures require more resilience than others.
An autocratic command and control culture (there are still a few out there! ) can be more hard-nosed and less tolerant of errors than a more consultative employer. Such a culture may require new employees to toughen up and develop resilience quickly if they are to survive in such a demanding environment.
Certain jobs require greater resilience than others e.g. those with stretching sales budgets.
I had the privilege of managing a recruitment and HR consultancy for twenty five years and saw many employees embark on their careers with great energy and enthusiasm. However, some of these became discouraged if they failed to achieve their sales targets even if that failure was due to circumstances outside their control e.g. a vacancy was cancelled or the person who was offered the job decided not to relocate. The mistake that some recruitment consultants made in this type of situation was they took their failure to fill the job as a personal slight which reflected badly on them, whereas the more resilient consultant was able to take such a setback in their stride and would immediately look for new positions to work on or for additional candidates to put forward for the vacant position.
Be resilient if you get negative feedback at a performance review.
This is particularly important if you under the impression that you were performing well and were held in high regard or if you had never received this kind of feedback before. This kind of setback can be particularly painful if it results in you not receiving an anticipated salary increase or if you get a minuscule increase. This will naturally be discouraging initially and will require you showing considerable resilience in coping with the disappointment and disillusionment that you may feel. Rather than sulk about this my advice would be to dust yourself down, make the necessary changes to achieve an improved performance rating and a decent salary increase at the next salary review date. These are character building types of situations that will constitute a real test of your resilience.
Develop resilience if you are repeatedly passed over for promotion.
If this happens you need to have a full and frank discussion with your boss to understand where you are falling short and what you have to do to rectify the situation. If you take on board your boss’s feedback this should help get your career back on track. If it doesn’t, it may be time for you to consider working for a company where your skills will be recognised and rewarded accordingly.
Resilience may be required if you and your colleagues are under pressure because of quality issues in your department.
This can be difficult because it is not easy to feel the spotlight is on you or your colleagues in this kind of scenario. It is normal to experience some degree of blame and disapproval from others in this kind of situation. You will need to be resilient to avoid becoming discouraged and disillusioned if you experience feelings such as these.
Resilience may be required if issues in your personal life are causing you distress.
If this distress begins to impact your work performance, speak to your boss or to HR so that you can be ‘cut some slack’ in the short term while you take steps to resolve these personal matters. In the past one might have been advised to ‘shape up or ship out!’ in this type of situation but thankfully we now live in more enlightened times where employees are more empathic in such situations
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