Transferable skills

Athletes who have been training full time their whole adult life often find it difficult to find a job once they retire. Without relevant experience in the working world, they may rely on transferable skills to give them a boost. Too often, however, we see CVs with skills listed as: ‘passion, teamwork, hardworking, works off own initiative’, or something along those lines. Show me somebody that couldn’t list those as skills!

When applying for graduate entry jobs, or roles that you don’t have specific work-based experience for, you need to think about your ‘super strengths’ or unique selling points. Think about qualities and skills that you have which will separate you from applicants and think about clear examples of where you’ve demonstrated these skills or qualities.

Useful frameworks to build examples around are ‘Challenge, Strength, Result’ or ‘Problem, Action, Result’. What problem or challenge were you faced with? What action did you take, and what was the result of your actions?

Some transferable skills that you might possess as an athlete include the following:

Self improvement

Many athletes, particularly those who have been striving for perfection for a number of years, are committed to personal development and self-improvement. Those looking for marginal gains are often self-critical (in a positive way), willing to accept feedback, aware of blind spots and dedicated to making improvements in all aspects of their performance. These skills and qualities can be useful in a variety of roles.

Problem solving and working with others to overcome a challenge

We don’t always think of the sporting field as a problem-solving environment, but think about the decisions that you and your team have to make on a regular basis in a high pressured environment. Overcoming an injury and putting together a rehabilitation plan may demonstrate problem solving skills, as may addressing defensive issues as a team, or adapting tactics following a last minute injury to a key player.  Putting forward suggestions, listening to others suggestions, devising a plan, reflecting on common goals, and following direction are just some of the important aspects of the problem solving process.

Communication skills

Being able to communicate with a variety of individuals in a variety of positions, is often something that employers look for. Think about all the people that you communicate with on a regular basis and how you communicate with them. Athletes often develop mature relationships with adults and people in authority from an early age. The coach-athlete relationship is one often reflects employer-employee relationships. The way in which athletes communicate with funders or sponsors, national governing bodies, appeals committees, and the media tends to be similar to the communication styles required in worked-based situations. Managing relationships with teammates is similar to managing relationships with colleagues. Any experience you have mentoring young athletes or less experienced teammates, coaching or officiating, or making guest speaker appearances will further demonstrate an ability to communicate with a diverse range of people. Make a map of who you communicate with on a regular basis, the roles that those people fill, and the ways in which you communicate with them.

Resilience

Few athletes reach the top of their sport without demonstrating resilience and an ability to repeatedly overcome setback. Think about how appealing your ability to refocus, reassess goals and adapt your methods following setbacks, and your ability to continue to work towards your ultimate aim, no matter what life throws at you, would be to a potential employer.

Commitment to excellence

The ability to demonstrating a commitment to excellence is likely to be appreciated by many employers. Those who demonstrate a commitment to excellence in their sport are likely to commit to excellence in other aspects of their lives. Wanting to be the best you can be, taking ownership of you life in order to achieve excellence, and being able to build a support team around yourself who also want to excel are abilities which are desirable in most work settings.

These are just some examples of skills that you may have developed as an athlete which may appeal to potential employers. Think about the things that you do in your sporting life, and how the skills and qualities required to be a top athlete can be applied to the workplace. Remember to think outside of the box and to avoid vague terms such as passion, teamwork and hardworking, unless you have very specific examples which separate you from the 99% of other applicants who will also list these skills on their application form.

Personal identity: a short task

In a previous blog I wrote about the importance of having an identity that is not solely based around your successes as an athlete.  I want to take this opportunity to share a task that I asked young talented individual to complete as part of a workshop I ran on dual careers a few weeks ago.  This is a useful task for individuals of all ages to complete, and is a good starting point for career planning, a way of focusing and motivating individuals, or simply an exercise to boost confidence.

This is me
Explore your personal identity by filling an A3 sheet of paper with things that make up you and your personality.  Use words, phrases, sentences, pictures, or images cut from magazines and lay out the page in whatever way you feel appropriate.  Include some or all of the following:

• Successes that you have had outside of sport
• Characteristics that define your personality (e.g. three words that describe you)
• Long term goals – 1 for sport; 1 for education/career; 1 for life in general
• What I would like to be when I ‘grow up’.
• Hobbies
• Things you like (food, books, tv) – Pick one and explain why you like it
• Skills (maybe things that you’ve learned from sport that you can apply to life
• Things that make you happy/laugh
• Things that you like about your sport
• Why you do your sport
• Favourite subjects at school
• Your coping skills
• You top values*

This should be a positive document.  Use only positive words.  From this task you should see that there is more to you than just a person that goes to school, or a person that does sport.  You are multidimensional!

* Values-type exercises are among my favourite career planning tools.  Below is a list of some values.  Take some time working through the list and thinking about what each word means to you (each individual will interpret the values differently).  The theory is that those who are happiest in their careers have work and careers which meet their values.  Once you’ve made a list of the values that are most important to you, write them on a small piece of paper, and place it in your wallet.  Check it regularly and ensure that your values are being met on a daily basis.

Older individuals can take the above task a step further to help with career decisions.  Instead of just depicting the current you on a sheet of paper, you can depict your career so far as a journey or timeline, and explain how you’ve got from one stage to the next.  In a metaphorical sense, plotting your journey so far will help to see where the road is leading you.  Write down the key stages and words and talk through the plot with a friend or any willing listener.  This is a useful task when big decisions have to be made, as it takes the emphasis away from the pressure decision, and helps get you into your comfort zone.  We are all experts in our own lives, so that’s where we should focus our attentions.

I’ve included a further adaptation of the ‘This is Me’ task from a career perspective below.  This is something that I did for a recent job interview.  Essentially all of my work experience is in a sporting perspective, but writing it down like I did below helped me realise just how broad that experience is.  It’s ok to have life experiences that are just sports related, but recognising the skills that are transferable is key.  We’ll explore transferable skills in a future post.

Hopefully doing the above task will help you realise just how multi-dimensional you are and highlight areas that you can branch into.  Maybe it’ll inspire you to take up a new hobby, or generate an interest that you can explore on training camps when you have plenty of time on your hands.

Lifestyle, personal development and welfare support

There's more to high performance sport than training for an event, turning up, and competing.  Athletes, particularly in the professional era, have a lot to think about.  Eating healthily on a tight budget, keeping their finances in order, balancing a social life with an intense training programme, dealing with the media, keeping sponsors happy, handling the expectations of others, coping with long periods of time on the road, building functional relationships with coaches and teammates, keeping anti-doping whereabouts information up-t-date, and dealing with injury and other setbacks, are just some of the additional challenges faced by athletes.  Add to that the everyday demands of human life, work and educational commitments, personal relationships and financial concerns, and the busy life of the athlete, becomes the hectic life of the person.

With all these concerns and issues to balance, it's easy to see why an athlete might benefit from having a member of support staff to keep them on top of their 'life'.  But there is also something else that needs to be considered, and that's where the welfare, career or lifestyle support person really comes into their own.  A sporting career is like few other careers.  A lucky athletes will compete at their peak to somewhere in their early to mid thirties.  Many will finish much earlier, be it due to injury, burnout, lack of funding, or simply reaching their sporting goals.  Usually when individuals retire, they're done with work.  They've earned enough money to see them through their final years, and though a life without work can be difficult for anyone, of any age, to adjust to, the more relaxed pace of life is usually welcomed.  Retiring from a career in your early thirties is a whole different conundrum.  Goals may not have been achieved, few athletes have earned enough money to last the rest of their lives, and having lived on adrenaline and endorphines for many years previously, a massive void normally dominates the outlook of a retired sportsperson.  Retirement in the athlete has been likened to bereavement, and a particularly traumatic one in those who have not prepared for the retirement, or have not been able, for whatever reason, to retire on their terms.

The lifestyle adviser or welfare support person can help the athlete prepare for retirement in a number of ways.  Crucial to the transition is the development of other skills, and preparation for another job or career after sport.  A considerable volume of research supports the pursuit of dual careers from the early days, and though the value of dual careers is widely accepted, the reality is often very different.  Centralised training, increased professionalism, and increased social pressures on athletes makes the pursuit of education, training and employment very difficult for high performance athletes.  Furthermore, the increased money involved in sport often means that athletes don't need to work during the good years, meaning that they have less experience, and less earning potential after sport.  As professional increases, the role of lifestyle and welfare personnel becomes more important.  They are, to some extent, constantly fighting against the system.

Helping with transitions, dual careers and retirement is just part of what the lifestyle, career or welfare support person will help an athlete with.  Councelling and communication skills are important, and by helping an athlete work through their small issues, they are helping build the skills to manage and deal with issues and challenges in the future.  Development of goal setting, time management, conflict resolution and decision making skills will stand to an athlete in future sporting and non-sporting contexts, and though largely relevant to life outside of sport, some of these skills will actually help the athlete in their sporting performance.

This piece from the EIS website outlines how Performance Lifestyles helped Olympic champion rower Katherine Granger achieve sporting success. One of the greatest challenges of this whole area of support, however, is that not all strategies will help to improve performance.  Conflicting roles often exist, particularly if the lifestyle advisor or welfare officer is employed directly by the governing body or funding agency.  How do you support an potential Olympic medallist with depression would be best to spend time away from the support, when the sport as a whole, and ultimately your position, is dependent on medals won at the Olympics.  Obviously, the athlete's welfare is always top of your agenda, but measurement of your performance can be far from clear-cut.

While nutritionists are universally called nutritionists, and sports psychologists are known as sports psychologists across the board, different terms are often used to describe the people who provide the crucial lifestyle support to athletes.  UK Sport, and relevant home country sports institutes (EIS, SINI, SIS and SportWales), refer to the area as Performance Lifestyles, delivered by Performance Lifestyle advisors.  The Irish Institute of Sport run a Performance Transition Support Programme that is "designed to help [athletes] recover, refocus and re-energise" after an Olympic Games, and prepare for the next phase of their life. They refer to the area as Athlete Lifestyle.  TASS refer to the area as Education and Lifestyle Support; The Australian Institute of Sport deliver support through their Personal Excellence (PE) and Athlete Career and Education (ACE) programmes and High Performance Sport New Zealand runs an Athlete Life Programme delivered by Athlete Life Advisors. The England Cricket Board and the Professional Cricket Association run a comprehensive programme delivered by their Personal Development and Welfare Team, while the support professional rugby players receive through the RPA is delivered by Player Development Managers. Support personnel on some university scholarship programmes are simply called mentors.  The skills required by these professionals, the CPD opportunities available, and routes into this type of work will be covered in a future post.

Most professional athletes have access to lifestyle support through their national governing body or professional players association.  Athletes who are not yet at that level, and who would benefit from support, can contact us at Athlete Life Development to discuss and arrange one-to-one or small group support sessions.

Identity in sport

Recently, something happened which surprised me a lot.  I reached a point where I just couldn't talk about athletics anymore!  The watershed moment came on a recent altitude training trip to Ethiopia when I was staying at a training camp, surrounded by athletes, talking about athletics, all day long.

Don't get me wrong.  Sport is my life!  I run twice a day most days of the year, am in a bad mood when I haven't trained, have competed in the sport for more than 21 years and have no immediate plans of quitting, plan my social life around the race calendar, spend my holidays altitude training, studied sports science for 7 years, and have spent my entire working life supporting athletes and writing about sport.  I could not imagine my life without sport.  But at that moment in time, I just wanted to talk about something else!

I guess that even after all these years of being involved in sport, I've still managed to develop a personality independent of it.  True, sport has done a lot to make me the person I am, but I am not defined by it.  And that moment brought home to me just how important it is for athletes of all levels to have interests away from their sport, and to be able to switch off from repetition times, competitors' results, and target paces. Not only will it help with your performances as an athlete, but having interest outside of sport, and having an identity that is not completely built around sport, greatly eases the retirement transition.

I have often heard people say that you shouldn't study sport if you're an athlete; it'll be too much.  I can see where they're coming from, but there are a couple of flaws in their advice.   Who is going to make the best sports academics and practitioners, apart from the people who are genuinely interested in sport?  When advising athletes about career choices, I always encourage them to do something that they are interested in. Why study aeronautical engineering when you have no interest in either airplanes or engineering?  Yes, don't study sports science just because it has sport in the title - when you have no interest in science - but don't just avoid it because you already do sport.  There are many other ways to develop an identity that is not completely dependent on your sport and your performance as an athlete.

Let one thing lead to another

You may start out studying sport science, but this may lead to an interest in a particular area which takes you away from sport (e.g. biomechanics in ageing populations), and back again (e.g. how exercise can delay the ageing population).  Your interests are inspiring your career choices, but you have not pigeon-holed yourself because of what you see your identity to be.

Taking my own career as an example, I can explain this a little better.  I studied sports science because I was interested in sport and science.  This got me interested in research, and I did a PhD which looked at menstrual health in female athletes, something which I had a personal interest in.  Along the way I realised that I wanted to help athletes, and got a job supporting high performance athletes.  During this time I was surrounded, not only by high performance athletes, but by colleagues with a range of interests and hobbies.  I learned who to develop websites - when I set up a club website - and developed an interest in writing when writing athletics reports for a local newspaper.  I learned a range of skills on the job, that could be applied to a number of situations outside of sport.  Training at altitude in Kenya developed an interest in travel, and in African sociology and history.  I also got interested in photography, and started taking photos at races.  And I've always loved reading.  So the transition to writing a book which involved travel, taking lots of photos and running was an obvious one.  When doing that I learned about publishing, promotion, blogging and other social media, not to mention developing my stress management, self motivation and personal management skills.

The sport that I love has always been my guiding light, but I feel I have managed to develop a well rounded personality, with a range of interest (even if all these interests are related to sport).  I don't think I am defined by my results in athletics (probably just as well), or by anything else I have achieved along the way.  I am defined by how I behave, interact with others, and approach life.  All of these have been molded by my participation in sport, but would not change dramatically if I stopped running, and got a job away from sport tomorrow.

Surround yourself with the right people

There is no doubt but that being surrounded by the right people affects who we are, and how successful we become.  For some athletes that's being surrounded by other athletes that will motivate and push them. For others, being in a competitive environment 24/7 is just too much, and some successful athletes don't hang around with athletes at all.  Yes, you need people to understand you, but that doesn't always have to be other athletes.  Find the right mix of people for you.  Don't become stuck in a rut just because you and all your fiends have the some interests, drive and goals.  It's good if your friends have the similar values to you, but you don't have to have the same hobbies or interests as somebody else to get on with them.  In fact having a friend group with different interests, backgrounds and roles will not only help you in your sporting life, but will also help you moving forward from sport.

Don't let your results define your own self-worth

It's good to have stretching goals, to work hard towards those goals, and to celebrate in achieving those goals.  In fact there are few things more rewarding than finally realising a dream.  However, your self worth should't be defined by how fast you've ran, or what you achieved in sport.  I see myself as Elizabeth Egan, the person who takes on massive task, learns what she needed to along the way, overcomes a few setbacks along the way, and achieves what she sets out to do, rather than Elizabeth Egan who wrote a book.  The first is about character, is long-lasting and is independent of talent.  More importantly it consists of skills that can be transferred to any aspect of life.  The times we run, or medals we win are dependent on luck, other external factors, and talent, and will soon be forgotten about.  We can dine out for a lifetime on our personality and character, but even the Olympic golds will be forgotten about.

In summary
To have a long a successful sporting career, and a successful and rewarding life after sport, learn to have interests outside of sport. Surround yourself with a variety of well-rounded individuals, who may or may not participate in sport at a high level.  Other interests don't always have to have a negative impact on your focus or energy.  In fact, time away from thinking about training and performances usually have a positive impact.

The Application Form

Following Rachael's post yesterday about putting together a CV, I want to give some pointers on completing application forms.  More and more jobs require completion of an application form rather than a CV.  The same rules apply to application forms for funding, awards and scholarships.

1. Make an effort. If you expect somebody to take the time to read your application, be sure that you put some time and effort into completing it.  Don't just answer a questions with yes or no.  If you don't have a certain experience or quality then please explain.

2. Write in plain English, and not in txt speak.  Application forms are official documents, and shouldn't be written like you are writing to a friend.

3. Don't presume that the person reading the application already knows everything about you.  Even if you do know the person, then you still need to complete the form as if they had never meet you.

4. Complete the form properly.  If you are applying for a job by application, your CV will probably not be read, even if you are given the opportunity to attach a CV.  NEVER put see CV on an application form, and always ensure that the application form covers all the important aspects about you.

5. Be specific and concise.  If you are completing a scholarship application form state exactly what you have achieved.  Only include relevant results (not a life history of every competition that you have ever participated in).  Don't presume that the person reading your application is an expert in our sport, so include levels, divisions, leagues etc, where appropriate.

6. Don't beg.  This is true for both job and scholarship applications.  Don't guilt trip the person by saying that if they don't give you money/a job, you won't be able to do your sport or live any more.  Millions of people participate in sport for the pure pleasure of it, and never expect anybody to pay for their hobby.  Show what you can offer back, and how you can utilise the funding to best effect.  Don't come across as hard done by.

8. Give the person reading the document a reason to offer you an interview/funding/scholarship.  If you leave blanks or omit information, they may have nothing to go on.

7. Proof read the final document before submitting.

It is important to remember that the people that are reviewing your application are putting time, effort and money into reviewing your application.  Please, please, please make an effort if you are serious about your application.