Sabiha: Resilience is necessary for a successful career

Resilience is one of the key ingredient s to success. It is due to this aptitude that Sabiha Somji has been able to withstand life and career challenges that came her way during the time she was working on her goals.

She is one of the household names in the world of human resources in Tanzania as she is the brain behind Shugulika Afrika, a consultancy firm. Shughulika Afrika has for the past 15 years bettered the employment arena by connecting employers and employees and at the same time sharpened employees’ skills to match with the job market as well as enhance their productivity. Her story began in 2008 after a misunderstanding with her parents when she married a person they were not happy about. At the time Sabiha was working in an insurance firm, which was a family-owned business.

“I come from a family tradition that educates women but does not let them work in professional capacity. I, however, asked my parents to involve me in the family business so that I could start learning the ropes. They allowed me and my first work was to file old documents into an excel sheet which took two weeks to complete,” she recalls. Later on, there was a vacancy after the person in charge was caught stealing. Her parents entrusted her with the department, which Sabiha ran for about five years before stepping out.

After her marriage she took a year off to learn more about human resources. She had chosen HR due to her own experiences when she was looking for employment.

“And so I set out to develop a business that would make me money and at the same time help other people looking for jobs in different industries,” she explains.

In the early years of Shugulika which is a Swahili word that can be loosely translated as ‘getting things done’, Sabiha made a career map for employees seeking jobs and then trained them to fit in the roles they sought. “I started from scratch. I had to take a loan to rent a small office situated at the Mikocheni suburb in Dar es Salam. Through the grace of God, I started getting jobs from employers, most of whom were people I was connected with. The beginning was rough but full of lessons that have motivated me to get us where Shugulika currently is,” she says.

A short while later, Sabiha had a miscarriage. She, again, became pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl who, unfortunately, suffered health complications and this took a toll on her business.

“When you are an entrepreneur who has started from scratch, your business goes through the same tribulations as your personal life. This is one of the things that are out of your control,” she says.

She further narrates, “In 2014, I went through a divorce which caused me to go through depression. However, in the same year, my business scaled up because we added other services such as psychometric tests, payroll outsourcing and advisory services.”

In between the lines of understanding her emotions and how they affected other things and people, Sabiha learned that she was not happy. After some time when she began meditating, it helped to make her content again and more focused.

“Among the things that motivate me to keep waking up each day and work consistently, are my two lovely children. I want to set a good example for them as well as give them a good life. Another thing is that I am ambitious; I have big goals to achieve and one of them is, I aim to leave a footprint through impacting the lives of different people through my work,” she details.

Sabiha established her company based on the need to have something of her own. It has been through constructive feedback from her clients that Shughulika Africa has been able to advance over the years to accommodate the needs of the human resources industry in the country.

“If there was a chance for a do-over at my career, I would have gotten all of my degrees under my belt and I would have probably worked for another organization before establishing Shughulika Africa because this would have given me more experience in the field. It would have saved me a lot of time during the implementation,” she says.

Sabiha advises young people to start working on their health; both mentally and physically and to spend their time doing meaningful things.

“Time is such a valuable asset. Unlike money, no one can get it back once it is gone. Young people should use their time more meaningfully. They should also learn skills that are marketable and productive in this current digital era such as coding,” she says.

According to her own experience, Sabiha says that one quality that has seen her through the darkest of times is resilience, and it is this quality that allowed her to stand strong even when challenges were in her way.

“When you are going through life; whether it is personal or professional, you get knocked over a thousand times, the important part is not what has happened to you, it is how you react that matters. Will you sit there and wait for it to solve itself? Or will you stand up, dust up yourself and move on?