Sports Employment: How learning Sports Speak can get you your Dream Job in High Performance Sport.

By Wayne Goldsmith | In Sports Management

Whoopee!

You finished your Uni degree. Bachelor of Applied Science in Sports Studies. Or Bachelor of Science in Human Movement. Or Masters in Exercise Science. Congratulations!!! Mum, Dad and Aunt Lucy are all proud of you. You did it!

You have a nice shiny new degree, a huge brain full of ideas and intelligence and a heart full of optimism, passion and drive just itching to enter a career in high performance sport.

So you start digging through the Sports employment adverts, you visit the sports jobs web sites and you sign up for a few sports career update newsletters.

And you wait.

And you apply for a few jobs.

And you wait.

And maybe you get an interview.

And you wait.

And then, six months after graduation you find out that maybe getting a job in high performance sport wasn’t as easy as you thought and you might want to start learning lines like, “Would you like to Super Size that today, Sir”, “Can I tell you about our blackboard specials today Ma’am” and “Did you have discount coupon to get 4 cents off your fuel purchase?”.

So to help you get in and stay in the world of high performance sport, here is a guide on how to read those all too appealing job advertisements in the high performance sports industry.

There are three rules when it comes to getting a dream job in high performance sport – and for that matter a dream job in any industry:

  1. It’s about who you know;
  2. It’s about who you know;
  3. It’s about who you know.

And, my friends, here’s another piece of advice – it is no good wining, whinging and complaining about it: you need to be as committed to making contacts and industry connections as you are about study, research, coaching and high performance programs. Fact of life: accept it – move on.

The next piece of truth for you budding high performance sports professionals to accept is that very few advertised jobs in the sports industry are actually really open to all applicants.

Take a list of 100 advertised jobs in high performance sport.

A large percentage of these 100 jobs, (particuarly the government sports jobs) are often opened to internal applicants only (in spite of what it says on the official job advertisement). It’s what large sporting organisations do when they have had a review, have re-schuffled a few roles, re-named a couple of departments and now have to get the incumbents to re-apply for their own jobs – usually at higher salaries. Goes on all the time.

Now take off another large percentage of these 100 jobs who are informally taken by head nods, hand shakes and agreements signed with cappuccinos, (with most jobs in high performance sport its more about dinner than your degree).

Now take off another percentage of the 100 jobs which will go to former athletes and coaches and people who have political and personal connections within the sport.

What are you left with? Three jobs out of 100 that you can actually apply for:

  1. Development Officer for Junior Underwater Trampolining;
  2. Sports Administrator for Regional Tug-a-war;
  3. Assistant to the assistant deputy, vice, assistant Treasurer of Kurdistan Cricket.

Good luck with your application - feel free to list me as a referee!

In addition to having great networking skills, there is an art to applying for jobs in the high performance sports industry: you have to master Sports Speak.

Sports Speak is a special secret magic language that people in sport use to communicate secret messages to other people in sport through the medium of position descriptions and advertisements and unless you are fluent in this language, your chances of securing that high level high performance gig are about as good as Paris Hilton winning the Nobel Prize for Literature this year.

Sports Speak must become your second language and to master it means that dream job with professional sport, an Olympic team or a government run sports institute is within your grasp.

Here’s some examples of Sports Speak to help you on your pathway to success:

  • “Demonstrated experience in leading people“: Sports Speak Translation = Have been in charge of staff but never introduced any changes which upset them or created any problems;
  • “Proven record of stakeholder engagement”:  Sports Speak Translation =Listen to everyone, pander to factions and splinter groups, compromise all decisions to avoid conflict and get nothing of real significance actually done;
  • “Change management skills”: Sports Speak Translation = Must make a few minor, largely ineffective, cosmetic changes but not too many and not too fast – you might wake up some of the staff;
  • “Demonstrated decision making skills”: Sports Speak Translation =  Being able to do what you are told to do;
  • “Innovative”: Sports Speak Translation = Copy the best ideas of other organisations after doing benchmarking junkets all over the world and claim them as your own;
  • “Ability to develop financial and strategic plans”: Sports Speak Translation = Desk Job - mostly administrative;
  • “Ability to monitor progress towards objectives and use evaluation and research information to improve effectiveness”: Sports Speak Translation = Desk Job – totally administrative.
  • “Understanding of the structure and dynamics of sport and government processes”: Sports Speak Translation = Have lots of connections and contacts in the sport world who you can use as consultants to help sort out problems.

Here’s a list of things that you will never see on a position description or job application for a role in high performance sport – and this is a fundamental reason why sport continues to be a remarkably conservative institution around the world where change, innovation and creativity - and by extension the industry as a whole – does not progress to a level that is anywhere near it’s potential:

Wanted: Sports Leader – to lead us to be the best in the world.

Qualities and attributes:

  • Someone who thinks about, talks about and openly embraces winning;
  • Visionary leadership: able to lead consistently with passion, drive and enthusiasm;
  • Team inspirer: able to create and sustain a high quality collaborative team environment where every one’s talent is optimised and every individual consistently contributes to their full potential;
  • Creative and innovative: prepared to take risks, to think laterally, to think things and do things that no one else in the industry is prepared to;
  • Uncompromising in their commitment to create a winning environment for all athletes, coaches and people involved in the sport (sorry – can’t say stakeholders. The only people who should be called stakeholders are those planting tomatoes or installing picket fences);
  • Integrated thinker: thinks and acts across disciplines, across sports, across industries to search for the best possible solutions to performance problems;
  • Experience valued but only if you are capable of thinking, learning and growing faster than at any time in your professional career;
  • Change management not needed: you must live change and thirst for continuous improvement.

If the Universities and other sports industry training organisations were serious about preparing people for a career in high performance sport, instead of pumping students through a Bachelor of Applied Science (Human Movement), they would create a new, more practical, more realistic list of course offerings:

  • Bachelor of Language (Sports Speak);
  • Bachelor of Applied Sports Networking (Sports Management Systems);
  • Masters of Sports Contacts and Connections.

What does your degree say?

Wayne Goldsmith

© 2010, Sports Coaching Brain. All rights reserved. This post can not be reproduced in full or in part without the expressed consent of the author Wayne Goldsmith.

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June 25, 2010

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Comments

2 Responses to “Sports Employment: How learning Sports Speak can get you your Dream Job in High Performance Sport.”

  1. james marshall on June 26th, 2010 1:18 am

    Hi Wayne,
    I have both been a victim and beneficiary of this. All my work has come from word of mouth- anything I apply for seems to have been fixed before it is put out there.
    I now concentrate on doing the most excellent work that I can with my athletes and coaches- and then reflect on that- with some promotion.

  2. Wayne Goldsmith on June 29th, 2010 9:56 am

    Thanks James.

    I like a quote I heard recently from a leading professional football coach: “If you have to apply for a job in high performance, you will not get it. You don’t apply for jobs at this level – you get invited to do them”.

    Maybe I am too cynical – or maybe I have become a realist.

    WG