There was a time, certainly in Britain, when a bankruptcy or an individual voluntary arrangement was something you hid in the cupboard next to the skeleton – and certainly not something you'd mention in a job interview.

But society is changing, and people are more likely to be impressed by the way others have overcome financial problems – and employers are starting to view fiscal battle scars like individual voluntary arrangements as badges of honour.

I'm a celebrity, get me an individual voluntary arrangement

This is most obvious in the world of celebrity. Pop mogul Simon Cowell's current success is made all the more impressive by the fact that 10 years ago he was bankrupt, having spectacularly crashed and burned his first career chances. Actor Christopher Biggins declared himself insolvent around the same time – and was recently crowned King of the Jungle in ITV's I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

There are examples in the world of business, too. Alan Sugar is one man who pulled himself up from financial ruin; Peter Ridsdale, despite being widely regarded as a man who nearly destroyed Leeds United Premiership football club, has been given charge of Cardiff City less than five years later. Walt Disney went bankrupt twice before hitting the jackpot with Mickey Mouse.

Individual voluntary arrangements can be a sign of toughness

Many employers see bouncing back from something like an individual voluntary arrangement as a sign of toughness.

Nicholas Beart, an entrepreneur who has given a new lease of life to businesses like Boden, the New Covent Garden Soup Company and Green & Black's chocolate, deliberately looks for people with "negative experience" when recruiting.

"When I get a CV that says I went to Oxford then to Goldman Sachs, I'm 29 and swell, I think: totally useless. What we look for is where the applicant screwed up and how they got out it," he told Management Today.

Having something like an individual voluntary arrangement on your CV shows that you had a problem but took positive steps to solve it – from admitting the problem (something that is all-too-rare in business) to planning a solution to executing it.

Make an individual voluntary arrangement work

Many employers will assume that the experience alone will have helped you develop valuable skills. Writer Tony Parsons recently wrote an article for GQ magazine about how failure – particularly financial failure – tends to draw hidden resources out of people, and allows them to discover strengths they never knew they had.

Of course, if you're planning to arrange an individual voluntary arrangement, you've got to make it work – employers won't be impressed if, having started on the journey, you never made it to the other side.

But if you do then it's something to really congratulate yourself on – before everyone else does.

Talk to Varden Nuttall about an individual voluntary arrangement.

Varden Nuttall has been established for more than 15 years and is dedicated to helping people in financial difficulty find a debt management solution through an individual voluntary arrangement (IVA). We employ 90 people, including trained and skilled individual voluntary arrangement administrators, we are one of the largest individual voluntary arrangement companies in the UK and handle more than three per cent of all individual voluntary arrangement applications. To find out more about the company, or to make an appointment to talk about putting an individual voluntary arrangement in place, call us today on 0800 031 9802 or fill in our online enquiry form.