Resilience

What is Resilience?

Oxford Dictionary: the ability of people or things to recover quickly after something unpleasant, such as shock, injury, etc.

Merriam Webster Dictionary: an ability to recover from or adjust easily to adversity or change

According to the American Psychological Association, psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.

In your job search for a role in the pharmaceutical industry, resilience is a requirement! This process is not something that is typically easy or straightforward. As physicians, our experience with job searching is limited. The path to becoming a physician does not require the same type of job searching as most jobs. We have “the match” for example, where you might interview for multiple residency positions but you aren’t going through a more typical job search process.

As you start begin the pharmaceutical industry career search, prepare yourself for rejection. This is also something many physicians have little experience with. As typical over-achievers, rejection is not something than many physicians have encountered to a substantial degree.

The mental preparation for the transition to the pharmaceutical industry should be a key focus in your preparation. Build your resilience, set reasonable expectations and understand that rejection is likely to be a part of the process. Your mental approach to this process will be key to your success. Give mental preparation time and attention!

References:

https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience