Resilience and Career Reinvention: Why Your Skills are Stronger than You Think

by Clara Hahn

The theme of this year’s People and Culture Festival is ‘Resilience Ready’.

In the West, it’s common to think that resilience means enduring difficult circumstances. This might mean putting up with roles, relationships, or situations that are not serving you or even doing you harm.

We’ve all heard the old saying that hardship builds character. Or maybe we’ve had someone tell us to just “tough it out” when we’re going through a difficult time. 

But I believe resilience is not endurance. 

To me, resilience means having the courage, curiosity and confidence to respond to difficult circumstances and use them to find new opportunities. To do this, you have to trust that you and your skills have value and to believe that you are allowed to seek better conditions for yourself. 

That belief is at the heart of all transformation and it forms the core of Fired Up’s approach to career development. It was true for me personally and it led me to found Fired Up. 

Clara Hahn’s story

Shortly before I founded the company, I found myself in difficult circumstances. 

I was unemployed and on social benefits. I had just left the father of my daughter. I was learning to be a single mother and trying to reorient my career at that same time. 

In a very short space of time, my entire life had changed radically. I was forced to adapt everything from my day-to-day habits down to my core sense of identity. 

I went to a professional coach but it left me deeply disappointed. Here I was trying to reorient myself in a completely new world and the coach just wanted me to get back into a job ASAP. 

Instead of paying close attention to who I was and to my unique situation, skills, and experiences, they focused on my CV. They were looking at my past, not my future. 

Founding Fired Up

This all happened shortly before the 2020 pandemic. As I looked around, I realized I wasn’t alone in my situation. My circumstances were changing, but so was the entire world.

I saw a lot of my creative friends unemployed and unsure of what to do next. Here were people with lots of experience and deep, diverse skill sets, and they were feeling lost. 

So after getting just a few coaches on board, I responded to our collective crisis by starting Fired Up. 

At the core of our organization is the belief that unemployment is an opportunity for professional reorientation. We start with the individual and their unique skills and experience rather than trying to box them into traditional roles. 

The world of work is changing rapidly, so why should anyone remain stuck in the same old systems?

We believe in skill stacking

At Fired Up, we reject the notion that you need to stick with one career all your life.

Instead, we embrace the idea of skill stacking — the understanding that your unique experiences combine to form a powerful mix of skills that make you more valuable, distinctive, and adaptable in today’s job market.

You don’t need to be the absolute best at one single skill. Instead, by being good enough at several skills that work well together, you create a unique professional profile that’s hard to replicate.

Stacking the skills you already have—or adding new ones to your list—gives you a profile that is:

Complementary

Diverse skills often enhance each other. For example, a designer who learns marketing and public speaking can communicate and sell their ideas effectively.

Cross-disciplinary

We all acquire skills across different areas, jobs, life experiences, and contexts.

Adaptable

Skill stacking better equips people to navigate the fast-changing job market, where careers aren’t always linear. It also helps them cope with changes in their personal lives, giving them the flexibility to adapt to new circumstances.

Differentiated 

Skill stacking makes it easier to stand out, especially in fields where many candidates share the same core expertise. 

We help clients think of their skills this way and assist them in finding the courage, strength, and clarity to pursue careers that are better suited to their personal and professional development.

Young people no longer trust the labor market 

Recent studies in Germany and abroad have suggested that workers, particularly younger ones, are increasingly anxious about their professional and economic outcomes.

In Germany, a 2024 study showed that nearly half of young people experience (48%) financial stress on a daily basis. 

In another recent study, 79% of young German workers (18-24) expressed concern that the country’s economy was changing for the worse, and that they would be negatively impacted by these changes.

Jobseekers struggle to find entry-level jobs

Even the most optimistic young workers are struggling to enter traditional careers. 

A recent study of career portal Stepstone.de, found that the number of entry-level job listings was 45% lower than the five-year average in the first quarter of 2025. 

While we can only speculate, this sudden drop might be linked to a number of factors: 

• Stagnation in the German economy

• Rapid adoption of AI tools

• Automation of tasks that used to be completed by entry-level hires

Whatever the cause, without entry-level jobs, young job seekers are struggling to get in the door.  

Young people are going freelance

In response to this changing economy, many young people are adapting by using their skills to create work on their own terms. A study in Germany last year found that a record number of young people were choosing self-employment.

In 2024, 39% of all founders in Germany were aged 18-29, an all-time high in the country. In the same age group, 36% of all respondents said they prefer self-employment over being an employee.

This trend appears to be part of a huge global shift. Another study suggests that globally, the freelance gig economy is growing three times faster than traditional employment, projected to reach nearly 50% of all jobs by 2028.

Here’s what we offer at Fired Up

Fired Up responds to this changing job market with a dynamic, human-centered

approach, helping people recognize their strengths and shape their own direction with clarity and confidence.

We offer three different kinds of services: job coaching, founder coaching, and upskilling programs. As a certified educational provider in Germany, these are free to anyone registered as jobseeking or unemployed at the Agentur für Arbeit.

Job Coaching

• 2-7 weeks of 1:1 online coaching

• Adapted to your needs: from general orientation to specialized and pragmatic advice.

• Choose from a diverse network of over 80 coaches according to your preferences.

Founder Coaching

• 2-8 weeks of 1:1 online coaching

• Comprehensive and personalized overview of necessary founder skills, from finance to marketing.

• Support preparing for Gründungszuschuss application (this is a grant from the Agentur für Arbeit to support new business)

 

Upskilling Programs

• 3-month group online courses

• Interactive group focus and highly practical

• Designed around client needs and in response to changing job market

Why should you trust Fired Up? 

We are very proud to have a 4.9 rating on Google from 254 clients, with not a single one deleted or paid for. Here’s a little summary of what they’re saying:

Clients consistently praise our organization for its supportive and human-centered approach, and for creating an open space for them to think creatively about their professional lives.

Many of them comment on how Fired Up helped them reorient in a moment of crisis.

They comment on our coaches’ skills in helping them gain clarity about the next steps in their careers, and empowering them with the confidence to pursue them. They also compliment us for equipping them with the practical skills necessary to make these changes in the current job market.

Job coaching outcomes

We’re also very proud of our clients’ outcomes. In a survey of our Job Coaching clients, we found that 57% of them successfully landed a job after coaching, with 17% still actively in the application process within two months of coaching, and 27% still job seeking 6 months after coaching.

Founder coaching outcomes 

With our founder’s coaching, we found that 70% of our clients were able to successfully

launch their business 6 months after coaching. 24% had not launched their business after 6 months but were working on it and just 7% had not launched a business after 6 months.

Rounding up with resilience

I’d like to close by returning to the theme of this year’s People and Culture Festival, a theme that feels especially relevant today, in a moment of profound change in the labor market: resilience.

We believe career resilience isn’t about simply enduring hardship, whether it’s job instability, harmful work conditions, or a personal or professional crisis. 

Rather, it’s about recognizing these moments as a call to change, and responding with the curiosity, courage, and confidence to move forward.

For Fired Up, and for me, career resilience isn’t endurance. It’s reinvention.

And unemployment isn’t a setback. It’s an opportunity.

 

About Fired Up

 

We are Fired Up Space. We are a certified educational provider that offers coaching and further education programs to jobseekers. Since the early 2020s, we’ve been helping people embrace their unique skills, so they can better integrate into the job market and move forward with their professional lives.