Recruiter Resilience

As mentioned in my previous post I would like to chat about the concepts of resilience and managing adversity and how they have had a positive effect on myself and all the recruiters in my company.

The concepts are not specific to recruiting and can be used by anyone in any industry, career and any sphere of life (personal and work - a double benefit).

As all recruiters know, ours is an adversity rich industry! lots of competition, extensive demands from both clients and applicants allike, deadlines, deadlines, clients changing their minds, applicants not always disclosing all required information, high targets etc. (you know the rest).
It's no wonder so many recruiters burn out, whilst other never even last the first year in the industry.

I wanted to know why despite all of this some recruiters just keep going and succeeding, doing well when others falter.

So I did some research and tests and whilst their are various contributing factors, the areas that came up as the main contributors were the persons resilience levels and ability the manage adversity.

Adversity and resilience are basically a persons ability to bounce back from and take control of adverse and difficult situations. In other words how well you deal with challenges even if you initially percieve them as negative, how quickly do you get on with it after difficult situations, do you take responsibility for what happens to you or do you think it is happening "to you" without you having any control.

I had the recruiters (as well as myself) complete resilience and adversity quotient tests and the scores confirmed the above. Those who scored the highest were those who were succeeding more often in their operations.

Resilient people and those who manage adversity successfully are often more successfull and / or happy (I'm not just talking money or work here, but in all areas of life.)
This is not to say they don't experience difficulty and challenge or never feel unhappy but when they do they manage it better and faster. They believe they have control, take control and move forward.

The beauty of these attributes is that not matter what level you are at with them at this stage you can improve them.

After testing myself and the other recruiters I continued researching for tools and found a book called "Adversity Quotient at Work" by Paul G Stoltz (he also wrote "Adversity Quotient" which is less work oriented but the concepts remain similar). You can find the books at www.amazon.com (and probably various other on or off line book stores)

I found the book (I listened to it as it is also available in cassette form) excellent, exceptionally insightfull and practical. I used the methods in the book (along with other research on the area of resilience) to train myself and the recruiters who work with me and work on increasing their levels of resilience and adversity management. The results have been wonderfull! Thw recruiters are more successfull and happy in thier work as well as personal lives (an added benefit as we all know it is often difficult to do well at work if we are not happy outside of work), they have told me so often.
They are more understanding of clients and applicants, their needs, their personality differences, their reactions to different situations etc. They have assumed more responsibility for what happens in their operations, they no longer blame as many outside influences when things go wrong or become challenging. They take control, they bounce back faster and get on with it. And so do I.

If you are a recruiter, manager of recruiters (or anyone in any walk of life for that matter) I believe it is definately worth putting some effort into improving your resilience and ability to manage adversity. Read about it, do some research (the internet has allot on these subjects), practice the methods of improving and further develop your skills in these areas.
You wont be sorry and will be a stronger recruiter.
I would suggest taking a test to establish your current level this will give you a place to start from, then after a while of putting the methods into practice you can test again and see how you have improved. (Remember it does not matter what level you are at now, as you can always improve.) you can find one at: http://discoveryhealth.queendom.com/resilience_abridged_access.html

In my next post I will mention some of the other things I have put in place to benefit the recruiters who work with me and how they have worked (or not) for us.

P.S. thanks for feedback on www.jobresponder.com, really helpfull!