Resilience skills involve being able to ‘bounce back’ after a disappointment or setback. Resilience will enable you to continue trying at a problem until you reach a suitable outcome. To have resilience is to believe in your ability to cope when things don’t go to plan.
Activities where you could develop resilience skills
You can demonstrate resilience during your time at university by showing how you perhaps recovered your grades after a difficult assignment or continued succeeding despite adjusting to a different way of studying (such as remote learning during the pandemic) or a difficult or personal circumstance.
Alongside your studies, searching and applying for jobs can be physically and emotionally time-consuming and can often be met with disheartening rejection. ‘Bouncing back’ and continuing to develop, enhance and submit further applications is also evidence of resilience.
The following activities, which may be undertaken as part of or alongside your studies, can be good ways to develop your resilience skills:
- : Doing something new and building relationships with others helps to build your self-esteem and confidence, and important part of being resilient.
- : With Peer Mentoring you’ll be supported to achieve your challenges, a great way to build resilience.
- Commitment and dedication can be developed by making an impact to something that is important to you, a key part of resilience.
- : Prioritising your wellbeing is vital for a growth mindset and can help you to look at the big picture and be aware of how your thinking patterns affect your resilience.
- : If you’re doing some of the above, why not take part in the Hallam Award and get recognised for your extra-curricular activities.
How is resilience assessed in recruitment?
Some examples of application form and interview questions which are designed to test resilience skills:
- Give an example of a time when you overcame a problem.
- Provide an example of a time when something didn’t go to plan.
- Tell us about a situation when a project failed. How did you manage this?
If you are unsure how to structure an answer for either an application or interview questions, visit the application section of our website.
In assessment centres you may be asked to take part in ‘impossible’ exercises, or where the parameters of the exercise shift. To assess your resilience skills, assessors will then observe how you carry on through this difficulty.
Further articles and videos on resilience can be found here: .
