Summary
So, you've finally got the job. Now, how do you keep it? For the Podcast’s third episode, Annie speaks directly to the employers you want to hire you. Piotr Mierzejewski, the director of DB2 Development, IBM Data and AI at IBM Canada, and Greeni Verweij, Senior Recruitment Consultant from Blackberry share an employer’s perspective on career resilience, with personal stories to go with it. They also talk about what to do when you make a mistake, and how you can react to it.
Annie: In episode three of our Career Resilience series, we’re talking to Piotr Mierzejewski, the Director of DB2 Deployment, IBM Data and AI at IBM Canada, and Greeni Verweij, Senior Recruitment Consultant at Recruiting in Motion. Welcome everyone! We’re looking forward to an employer’s perspective on career resilience. Welcome Piotr and Greeni.
Podcast Intro: The career journey is rarely linear. It is full of twists and turns. Because of this, we know that the transition from school to work can feel scary, uncertain and challenging. To address this, we’ve developed this podcast series to chat about career resilience with guest speakers to show that you are not alone on this journey. Career resilience is the mindset that allows people to pursue their career goals and bounce back, pivot, and thrive when confronted with challenges such as difficult job search, a failed school program, job loss and changes, or career uncertainty. In this podcast series we will focus on five skills that allow us to thrive when unexpected events happen. They are: curiosity, persistence, flexibility, optimism and risk taking.
Annie: So Greeni, we’ll start with you. What does career resiliency in the workplace mean?
Greeni: So to me, career resiliency in the workplace means to have a goal in mind or a dream job, and to continue to strive for it. So it’s a blend of perseverance, passion and charisma. Resiliency on its own is usually regarded as pushing through challenges, but in the workplace, I believe it’s crucial to have passion and charisma to create a positive and engaging atmosphere. So candidates or students like yourselves need to continue to apply for new positions, new opportunities, even if you haven’t received the response that you’d like to get, or the promotion, salary or the progression that you’re looking for the first time around. So don’t get discouraged. The right opportunity is out there for you. And, as I have been in the recruitment industry for about five years now, I can tell you that sometimes it takes a little while to get yourself to the next step in your career. For some people it happens relatively quickly, and for others it takes a little longer.
Annie: Thank you for sharing. Piotr, what does career resiliency in the workplace mean?
Piotr: That’s actually a very loaded question. First, it’s very important to understand that once you leave the school and you enter the workplace, that things get real. The stakes are real. Regardless of if you’re in development and there are tight timelines, there’s expectations or you’re in support or quality assurance, there’s a timeline, there’s expectations, there is revenue often on the line, and you have to be resilient to that. Now, you have to be able to basically adjust and actually have a positive attitude when put under pressure. You have to, you know, continue being resilient in a sense, and it’s all not about really career, but more mental resiliency that when those deadlines are met. And when you make a mistake, to be able to recover from that. Personally, I like to reset myself every morning, regardless of what the previous day brought. I come in with a positive attitude and I’m open to new challenges, trying essentially to adjust my point of view and look for innovative solutions. So it’s all about staying positive, not letting things that go bad—and they will. Let’s be very frank. Each environment is different. Each day within an environment that you’re in can be different. Each day will present you with a new set of challenges, and occasionally you will fail. Now, what’s important that we have to learn from these is we have to stay positive inside, we have to believe in our own aptitude and our strengths, and ability to adapt.
Annie: Thank you for sharing. What you’ve both spoken to is this idea of cultivating a resilience mindset regardless of the circumstance. We have five mindsets that we talk about on the topic of career resiliency. We touch on being positive, cultivating a positive mindset, as well as persistency and perseverance as well. So thank you for sharing. Piotr, we’ll start with you for this question. Can you give us an example of a staff member who shows a great deal of career resilience?
Piotr: Well, numerous examples from all my colleagues and various teams that I work with. One of the toughest situations that I can imagine that demonstrates this kind of skill is when there is actually revenue on the line. We have situations where, for example, there’s a problem with the system, and the revenue impact is close to a million dollars a day lost. As you can imagine, being in this kind of situation and being depended upon to actually solve the problem when there’s complexities of a code base that have millions of lines of code and so many various aspects that can go wrong. Being able to isolate yourself and essentially being able to focus, essentially like eliminate, block off all the noise inside you, and focus on delivering, delivering basically the work that you have to do in this kind of condition. It’s an excellent example. I could pull in countless examples of individuals while they have not signed disclosure agreements like we did, so I’ll refrain from that. But I see examples of this happening basically on a very frequent basis.
Annie: Right. What I hear you say is that the career resilience mindset is really something to cultivate, and it’s a very powerful thing to cultivate to ensure effectiveness despite what’s going on, and you mentioned calmness and to be able to stay laser-focused and to stay present. Greeni, can you give us an example of a staff member who shows a great deal of resilience?
Greeni: Yeah, for sure. So everyone has to have career resiliency. It could be specific actions, but it could also be a way of just being or the way that you carry yourself. Again, with passion, perseverance and humour. So I was speaking to an acquaintance of mine and he’s got over 10 years of experience in his field. He mentioned that it took him 9 months of applying to get him to the next level of his career. He is at the Director level at a large insurance company, so even people who have been at their careers for a long time still have to have career resiliency. Life will always throw twists and turns your way, and you’d need to be able to adapt and take what you perceive to be losses or failures as learning opportunities and use what you have to take an alternate route to get to that dream job that you’re looking for.
Annie: Thank you. From what I hear you say, is that learning is a life-long journey. And it doesn’t matter if you’re entry-level, executive level, wherever you are in your career, is really so important to cultivate career resilience. We share this with our students that the career path itself is not linear; it’s got lots of ups and downs, lots of uncertainty, things are unknown. So to be able to be resilient is to be able to move through this process while not knowing what the outcome is going to be, and to cultivate this idea of having that robustness in dealing with life. Greeni, how can students who are starting their first job or field placement or co-op better prepare themselves to cope, thrive, and manage with the challenges of a new job?
Greeni: So my advice for students to prepare themselves is ask questions when you start. Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification or feedback on how to do things properly. Talk to your manager if you’re having any difficulty or any trouble with certain aspects of your job, and they will help guide you in the right direction. It’s also important to invest in your personal and professional development, and to seek clarity on the challenges you’ll be facing in the position. One specific example is to invest in reading books related to the industry that you’re in. Or attend seminars and conferences, and talk to people that’s in your industry. You can learn to meditate or learn different breathing techniques so you can better manage the stress of a workplace. So I think we just don’t ask the obvious questions enough, and you should just feel comfortable in asking hiring managers or HR questions even before you start such as, “what are some of the challenges I can expect to face within the first three to six months of being in this position?” And “what does success look like in this position?” “What are some of the things that your organization would like to improve that I can also offer my support with?”
Annie: That’s great, and really essential as you say to be proactive and self-motivated, and to apply different techniques as well to cultivate mindfulness and spaciousness so we can build that resilience to persevere and to be successful. Piotr, how can students who are starting their first job or field placement or co-op better prepare themselves to cope, thrive and manage with the challenges of a new job?
Piotr: Oh boy. You know, forget everything that you think you know. Okay, the environment, your co-op providers, your school can prepare you for something, but as I mentioned earlier, each experience is unique in itself, okay? Be prepared to basically be surrounded by people who in many cases, not that they are smarter than you or more intelligent than you, it’s not about that, they just happen to be experts in the field. They understand the company, they understand how everything works. They understand for example the software, they understand the job that you’re supposed to do. It takes time to wrap up and learn about that, right? So you do come in with an open mindset. Now, open mindset and the ability to think outside the box is one of the dimensions that you have to think about. Now, be ready to challenge, be able to challenge people. You have to believe in your own aptitude, and just because you have an idea, essentially what I’m trying to say is that regardless how good an idea is, you need to be able to clearly articulate it. And we have to have confidence that what the idea you have—that the way you think about it—be prepared to be brave in that sense, be prepared to be open, challenge the status quo or processes that have been established there. Now, on the other hand, the other side of the coin is that do not get discouraged if your idea gets shot down. There might be very valid reasons for that. And definitely be able to accept somebody else’s opinion when they explain something to you. So it’s all among us. So what I’m trying to get to is actually effective communication and listening skills. So it’s not, you know, even in the roles of development when we spend the majority of our time actually coding in the source code, the effective communication of the ideas is actually critical. Ability to accept somebody else’s—I’ve been in multiple situations where the developers get heated because one has one vision (we should do it like this, we should do it like that). To be able to find a compromise and find this happy medium and try to move forward is of critical importance. Yeah, and then go back to the resiliency the next day. If something didn’t go your way, come in and actually, you know, change your attitude and keep going.
Annie: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Greeni, for the next question, what are some tips and suggestions you have to offer students to thrive in their career path?
Greeni: Okay, so I’ve got quite a few tips over here. The first one is to be a great listener. Practice asking more questions versus talking so that you can gain valuable insights. Take notes. Sometimes our memory is not as good as we think it is. Things that get written down have a much higher chance of being committed to your memory or being remembered. Be mindful of your surroundings. So choose your friends, your associates, people that you surround yourself with to help you get to your next level of your career. Again, invest in your personal and professional growth. So take care of your mental, emotional, spiritual health. Read books, attend seminars and conferences. Watch Ted Talks. Do as much as you can to improve yourself. Schedule your time and measure your success. What gets scheduled gets done, and what gets measured gets improved. So definitely use your calendar to help you stay organized and measure your success so you can see where you are and where you want to be. And find a mentor. It doesn’t matter who it is, just find someone that you look up to and want to emulate, and try to absorb as much knowledge from them as possible. And lastly, have passion for the type of work that you’re doing. So put in effort every day. Make yourself a little uncomfortable once in a while and reach beyond your expertise, and look for opportunities to grow and learn while you’re working.
Annie: Thank you so much for sharing all of these really valuable resources. What are some tips and suggestions you have to offer students to thrive in their career path?
Piotr: I don’t believe this is a fair question after an answer like that. [Laughs] So you know what, one thing that I’d advise—very simple advice—at the end of the day, when you leave work, do some soul searching and ask yourself the question, “have I learned something today?”. Something new. Not something, not the mundane task you already know how to do, okay? If the answer is, “I have not learned anything today,” then you wasted a day. You’ve wasted a day. Right? So, I’ve often spoke about the dangers of the comfort zones, and those are perceived to be—you know, I already know how to do something, this is great, I’m good at it. Well, this is actually a very dangerous trap. As everything else, the technology the workplace, everything is moving at such a pace that you go at an exponential rate. The skills that are necessary to keep up with everybody else, you need to grow yourself. As simple as that. So if you haven’t learned something that day, you made a mistake. Okay? You have to go back and do something different. I can’t remember a day where I haven’t learned something. And it’s been close to a decade that I’ve been in the business.
Annie: Right. Reaching out to the networks, and really taking advantage of networking itself, and really tapping into that hidden job market, and I really hear a lot of risk taking in your share about strategies. Piotr, reflecting on your own journey, what strategies helped you stay resilient in your own journey, and why.
Piotr: Boy, that’s a tough question. [Laughs] You know, I refuse to believe in stigmas. I am a Centennial College graduate, and currently holding executive position at IBM with about 300 reports. As in like I have 300 developers reporting to myself. I drive the strategy for one of the core products at IBM, and I’m surrounded by PhDs and Master Students, okay? And I never thought less of myself. Basically understanding and believing in myself was what was setting me apart. And the passion that I had for the technology, passion that I had actually for communication, and broadening my experience. This ability to move to a different role and tackle new challenges. Within nine years at IBM, I was in seven different jobs. Seven different jobs! I’ve touched, I don’t know, fifteen or twenty different technologies. Everything from machine learning, graph theory, UI development, hardware OS, databases, so it changes. Dev ops. I mean, I’ve done five different development roles and then I had various managerial roles within IBM’s portfolio. So again, be open to challenges. Believe in yourself, stay resilient, don’t believe in stigmas. And I didn’t discourage—if someone asked me did I succeed in every single endeavor? Have all my ideas materialized? Were they successful? No, by no means. I failed. I fail about twenty percent of the time. Okay? And by the way I think this is a great percentage. And I don’t look at it as a twenty percent failure, I look at it as eighty percent of success.
Annie: Thank you. Greeni, reflecting on your own journey, what strategy helped you stay resilient in your own journey and why?
Greeni: Okay, so I am a Centennial College grad myself as well. And I graduated with a diploma in Human Resources and I remember trying to get my first job was very very difficult. And at one point I was feeling a little discouraged, but again at that time I had reached out to my mentors and asked them, “how do I get my foot in the door with an organization to help me to get a job in recruitment or in HR”? And they kind of showed me what a career path would look like, they helped me network with other people in their network as well, so that definitely assisted me. And the way that I actually got my first job was I had applied to a position and I had gone in for an interview, and the person that I had met with had actually let me know that I didn’t get the position that I had applied to, but they did know someone else that was hiring and that position they were hiring for was possibly something that I would be interested in. And so that’s how I got my very first job. And so definitely it’s very very good that you keep a mentor and tell people in your network that you’re looking for a job. Or talk to them about the types of industries that you want to be in or the types of work that you want to be doing. And they will help you get the position that you’re looking for.
Annie: Thank you. What I hear you say is that passion connects to your authentic self, and when you trust yourself it gives you confidence because you stand out from the crowd essentially. You’re not following as you say the status quo and you’re being authentic, so when you speak, you’re speaking from that place of passion. Thank you so much to you both for contributing and sharing today all of your wisdom and your journeys. It’s really special to our Centennial student community to be able to hear from graduates who have succeeded and are coming back and sharing their journeys and pathways as well. Thank you for tuning in and joining us for episode three of our Career Resilience podcast. In episode four, we will be interviewing a panel of four International students who will be sharing their journeys of career resilience. Tune in next week.