After years in which the jobs came easy, Gen-Y and recent college grads find themselves in one of the worst job markets in decades. Aside from great resume and interviewing skills, a growing face-to-face network, the ability to work the web and the social networking places blindfolded, and outstanding job search skills, what else are you liable to need?
Resilience.
resilience: an act of springing back: rebound, recoil, elasticity; capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation, especially when the strain is caused by compressive stresses; the ability to achieve good outcomes after significant hardships
Fifteen years ago major corporations had "resilience training" on their regular agenda. Now, when it's needed more than ever, resilience training seems to have gone the route of the dodo bird. The conventional view is that resilience is a unique form of individual toughness given to a lucky few. Since that time a masterful piece of research has found the conventional conclusion false.
Research under the aegis of Wellesley College has studied the source of the human ability to overcome hardship, adversity and trauma. What was revealed was that rather than a unique form of individual toughness, resilience can be developed and strengthened in all people through relationships. But the study showed that that the focus will need to be on growth-fostering relationships.
Resilience is not about self-sufficiency. Indeed, the research shows that resilience develops as a result of connections. It evolves through our engagement in relationships that support, inspire and encourage our efforts to overcome challenges and hardships. Such growth-fostering relationships differ from ordinary, social relations. In short, the relationships that build resilience are the same ones that contribute to your learning opportunities and help you build your toolkit, and make life really interesting.
So what?
In Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi gets down to the growth oriented issue with the one question consultants use to choose one person over a pool of equally talented candidates: "If I were trapped in John F. Kennedy Airport for a few hours, would I want to spend it with this person?" Companies hire people they like, but especially those they think can make them and their companies better. And that means an expanded view of the world.
Let me put it this way: Oprah once said that "true friends bring you higher." Indeed, true friends enable the resilience you need for a work world profoundly challenged by a global meltdown.