Career Resources and Guidance
Most sports now recognise sports science as an integral part of their development and success. Most athletes consider the application of sports science as part of everyday training and competition. In relation to exercise science, many hospitals, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and National Health Service (NHS) trusts are now appointing specialists with exercise qualifications to work in areas such as cardiac rehabilitation and health promotion.
However, despite the increasing number of job opportunities in sport and exercise science, the number of sport and exercise science graduates is also growing, making competition for jobs intense. Students should therefore take every opportunity to gain experience and build networks whilst at university and think about how to develop your knowledge and skills beyond what you learn on your course.
Four tips to help develop your knowledge and skills
Keep up-to-date with current issues: It is important to recognise that in order to further your career you will have to take responsibility for your own professional development. Being a part of a professional body can help you keep up-to-date with news, upcoming events and the latest research in the sport and exercise science sector and ensure you are kept aware of opportunities to gain experience via internships, research projects or presenting your research at a conference.
Remember that new research in sport and exercise science is constantly being published; being aware of the latest developments is one way to show your knowledge and passion for your subject area – just make sure you are reading credible sources as there is a lot of misinformation on the Internet and in the media.
Gain additional experience to enhance your CV: A number of students are given the opportunity to study abroad for a semester in level 5. Students are encouraged to consider this option to further develop their global outlook, but also to help support their personal and interpersonal development through experiencing different countries and cultures. The study abroad options available provide students with a fantastic opportunity to broaden their horizons in a way that can benefit their study and employability, but, more importantly, provide invaluable life experiences and memories that will last forever. BASES student member Kyle Philip took advantage of this opportunity, read his blog on his experience .
Gain additional qualifications: Extra qualifications may be essential for you to progress in your chosen career – or may simply help you stand out in a crowded job market. Graduates who progress most quickly in their careers are often those who have sought to gain additional experience and qualifications. Employers will see this positively in terms of your willingness to learn and as evidence of commitment to your chosen career.
Undertaking further courses following your degree will make you more marketable and hopefully help you move up the career ladder. This, in turn, will generally mean your earning power increases accordingly. Qualifications might include coaching, first aid, gym instructing or safeguarding training.
BASES Accreditation is an industry-standard qualification for practicing sport and exercise scientists that will open many doors to a successful career in sport and exercise science.
The most common route to Accreditation is via the BASES Supervised Experience programme, which is open to anyone who has completed an undergraduate degree in sport and exercise science. BASES also offers specialist accreditations for practitioners working in high performance sport (BASES High Performance Sport Accreditation) or with clinical populations (BASES Certified Exercise Practitioner).
Useful Websites
The Careers in Sport guide provides an in-depth analysis of the different career options available in the world of sport, providing helpful advice on the qualifications and experience required for a career in sport.
This website from the Science Council is designed to show just some of the places that studying science, technology, engineering and maths can take you.
Most common resume mistakes that people should avoid
Artical detailing top 9 resume mistakes.
www.careerjet.co.uk
Careerjet is an employment search engine for the UK. It allows you to search a growing selection of jobs listed on company sites as well as jobsites in one go saving you the trouble of having to go to each site individually.
www.healthjobsuk.com
Lists the job opportunities within the NHS, so mainly for those interested in a clinical career.
www.jobs.ac.uk
Caters for all positions and studentships within higher education. Has an easy to use search engine, as well as e-mail updates on job openings. Also includes profiles of potential employers.
www.jobhopnow.co.uk
Job Hop Now is an UK job site with jobs in UK from job boards, recruiters and employers. Instead of going to many different sources and missing out the closing soon jobs, users can save time by going to our website and viewing all jobs from different sources.
www.leisurejobs.com
A website for those wanting to work in the leisure and fitness industry. Includes job listing for all the major health clubs and gyms, as well as information on obtaining the correct training to get into the leisure industry.
www.leisureopportunities.co.uk
Is a daily recruitment website for people looking for jobs in the leisure industry; including health and fitness, sport and spa.
www.leisurevacancies.co.uk
Look for jobs and careers advice spanning the leisure, fitness and wellbeing industry with our dedicated website and job search.
www.lifecoach-directory.org.ukThe purpose of the site is ultimately to provide the UK with a huge life coach support network, enabling individuals to find a life coach close to them and appropriate for their needs. This is a free, confidential service that will help those seeking a new direction in their life to find the encouragement they need.
www.prospects.ac.uk
This website provides lots of information on tips for job seeking, postgraduate options and careers open days.
www.sportengland.org
A great resource for finding jobs in sport and physical activity.
www.afpe.org.uk
The Association for Physical Education.
www.teachpe.com
A website for those interested in teaching. Includes a UK job search for teaching positions.
www.tes.co.uk
Caters mainly for teachers but there are job listings for those wishing to go into lecturing in further and higher education.
www.uksport.gov.uk
Advertises jobs in elite level sport and has a useful e-mail newsletter for the latest developments in elite sport.
www.speedupcareer.com
Information on career options, personality development, tips on work & job related issues.
www.grb.uk.com
Graduate Recruitment Bureau, a leading graduate recruitment consultancy in the UK. As a consultancy we offer free one to one advice, guidance through applications and personal job listings to students and graduates.
Careersinfootball.com
Did you know there are over 50 different careers available in football? provides up-to-date information, interviews with professionals in the game and next steps for your current situation. Also follow us on Twitter @football_career for the latest vacancies in professional football.
Trovit
Trovit provides a full and complete list of job ads published in thousands of classified websites which allows users to save time and effort during their search for Jobs by showing the most interesting and relevant job offers in one page.
www.jobted.com
A job board for searching local and international jobs and internships with over 100,000 job descriptions.
Jobapplications.co.uk
Features applications for the UK’s top companies, little-known organisations, and everything in between.
Inspiring Interns
Inspiring Interns are the UK’s leading graduate recruitment agency, connecting top graduates to the best employers UK-wide. Check out the sports section of their job listings for graduate jobs and internships across Sports and Fitness, with a focus on sports marketing and operations.
A step by step guide to securing an internship, covering everything from where to search, to interviewing, to writing a cover letter - https://resume.io/blog/how-to-get-an-intership
www.neuvoo.co.uk
A job search engine that indexes jobs directly from companies' career websites, placement agencies and job boards.
www.allaboutcareers.com
Our website contains advice articles, CV and interview tips, as well as a jobs board where we advertise on behalf of top employers.
www.adzuna.co.ukAdzuna is a UK based job search engine that lists jobs from over 1,000 sources. A free CV evaluation tool and comprehensive salary stats help jobseekers make smart decisions about their next career move.
www.gatewaycareers.co.uk
Gatteway Career Management is a group of experts in Career Coaching, Career Management and Performance Improvement.
www.careerboss.co.uk
Career Boss are a company that specialise in career guidance and advice for young people looking to enter a host of different industries such as Health, Education, IT and Business.
www.futurelearn.com
FREE CV Templates
Writing CVs and job applications is a skill in itself. It often takes practice and a fair amount of trial and error. However, when you’re in the process of applying for jobs, you might not always have time to design and refine your documents.
At FutureLearn, we’ve come up with a range of different free CV templates that can take some of the hassles out of the application process. As well as providing guidance on what you should include and why, we’ve also highlighted some online courses that can further boost your CV.
www.FutureLearnCareers
Our mission is to help everyone fulfil their potential in a changing world and explore which new job could be the right fit for them. We will help you find a career that matches your education and skills.
www.coursesonline.co.uk We offer a range of courses from many of the top providers across the country. The courses cover all sorts of subjects including health and personal training and the list of those available is ever updating.
Creative templates to help job seekers create perfect CVs, resumes, and cover letters.
jooble is a job search engine created for a single purpose: To help you find the job of your dreams!
You will find all job postings, vacancies and current openings available on Jooble. Have you ever heard something like that? Expect to find many job vacancies in the United Kingdom on Jooble. And this is not because Jooble is "the largest job site in the United Kingdom", "leading world employment resource" or something like that. This is because of Jooble's operation features; in the same way as any other search engine operates, Jooble does not compile all the information in its own database, but searches it out and does this much better than any other search engine.
When you perform a search with Jooble, you'll get links to job postings from more than 13020 different job sites throughout the United Kingdom that are the most relevant to your search terms.
Wikijob.co.uk, a website for students and job seekers looking for graduate schemes, share recruitment experience, and learn about interview questions and aptitude tests.
https://www.wikijob.co.uk/content/application-advice/cvs/how-write-cv
https://www.wikijob.co.uk/content/jobs-and-careers/jobs-by-major
Free practice tests on verbal and numerical reasoning tests (comes in handy during job interviews)https://www.practicereasoningtests.com/shl-tests/
https://www.123test.com/numerical-reasoning-test/
https://www.123test.com/verbal-reasoning-test/
https://www.123test.com/error-checking-practice/ and https://practicereasoningtests.com/psychometric-tests/?
Free practice Aptitude tests
https://wikijob.com/aptitude-tests/test-types/shl-tests
https://wikijob.com/aptitude-tests/iq-tests/iq-tests
OriGym Blog for personal training courses all over the UK, so why not take the next step towards your dream career today? Every employee at OriGym is a fully qualified personal trainer with a degree; we have all been where you are right now. No other company does this. Find out more about the range of fitness and personal training qualifications available.
List of Careers in Sport - updated for 2021, with 19 career paths included
Career Change Ideas for the Sport & Fitness Industry
How to Become a Personal Trainer
How to Write a Sports Massage Business Plan
uk.jobsora.com is a job search engine website, the main and only target of which is to help with finding a good job. You will find relevant vacancies in the whole country on Jobsora. Every day they are getting new vacancies from more than 250 employment sites and direct employers in the UK.
How to Write a CV - Tips and Advice to Help You Land a Job
https://www.s1jobs.com/blog/write-cv-tips-advice-help-land-job/
It provides essential information on landing a job, covering::
- How to structure a CV
- Adding an introductory profile to your CV
- Mentioning your professional experience
- Elaborating on your education
Here are a few tips the guide explores:
- There are 6 key parts of a great CV: contact details, introduction, skills and experience, achievements, education and training, and hobbies and interests.
- However, you should structure your CV according to the stage you are in your career. For example, if you’re a recent graduate, you want to focus on your education. But if you’ve had over 5 years of experience in work, you can leave your educational experience as a smaller section after your career history.
- Some roles will ask you to include a cover letter. This gives you the chance to build on anything you mentioned in your personal profile – or even serve as a replacement for information which you didn’t find space for, or didn’t feel was relevant enough to add.
Join Over 500,000 students learning new skills through over 3,000+ online video courses + new courses added each week!
A psychometric test is used to assess a candidate's cognitive ability and their personality. From a candidate's response psychometric testing can predict valuable insights such as job performance, competence, and motivations.
There are two general types of psychometric tests: ability tests and personality tests. Ability tests will be able to identify a candidate's level of cognitive ability. It can assess, to name a few, their numerical, verbal, logical, critical thinking skills. Personality tests are focused on understanding the candidate's behaviours and motivations.
Interview coaching with the UK’s leading interview coach - Get hired. Get promoted. Earn more.
Adobe Express Resume provides users with a variety of customizable resume templates to choose from. Users can easily input their personal information, work experience, education, skills, and other relevant details into the template. By utilizing Adobe Express Resume, individuals can conveniently create visually appealing and well-structured resumes without the need for extensive design skills or knowledge.
Adobe Express Resume here.
College Students and Taxes: https://moneyzine.com/tax/30-tax-facts-for-students/
College graduates and those who are about to open a new business might consider the above information from the piece handy:
- Understanding tax rates and how to calculate them
- Knowing tax exemptions in the U.S. Tax Code, applicable to a few
- Differentiating tax rates from different industries and incomes
- How to file taxes and correct tax mistakes
https://www.testhq.com/blog
TestHQ helps candidates prepare for assessments at leading employers such as PwC, KPMG and Accenture, among others. Our tests are based on real-world tests, and are designed to be a simulation of the types of challenge candidates face.
https://blog.cvonline.hu/ - Cvonline.hu has been helping job seekers find their new position for more than 20 years.
Useful Resources
Most of our career resources for students and early-career professionals can be found in the BASES Members' Area. Here you will find general and discipline-specific content including webinars, podcasts, videos, e-magazines, articles and more.
Below, we have compiled some career resources that are freely available on the web, as well as links to other websites and resources that you may find useful.
BASES and The Physiological Society animation
BASES have teamed up with The Physiological Society and a group of experts to produce an animation designed to highlight the wide-ranging roles that sport and exercise scientists undertake: including helping elite athletes, supporting those working in extreme environments, and promoting greater public health.
EIS Careers Podcast
The English Institute of Sport have produced this ‘special edition’ podcast which looks at Sport Science Careers in High Performance Sport. It is presented by Matt Slater and features studio discussion with the former EIS Director of Sport Science and Technical Development, Dr Steve Ingham, and Head of Performance Nutrition, Dr Kevin Currell, along with contributions from the Performance Director of GB Boxing, Rob McCracken, GB Canoeing Canoe Slalom Technical Coach, Mark Ratcliffe, and Ian Gatt.
Some of the issues it raises include:
- What do coaches want from their sport scientists?
- How do sport scientists work successfully with coaches and athletes?
- When do sport scientists get it wrong?
If you are interested in listening to this podcast you can find it here.
Irwin Mitchell sport podcasts
Irwin Mitchell has a podcast in which many important sports topics are covered, from managing and preventing injury, to mental health, and wellbeing of women in sport in comparison to men. The podcasts are available here:
https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/podcast#ep50 – Women in Sport and Wellbeing
https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/podcast#ep53 – Mental Health in Elite Sport with Lloyd Ashley, ex-Ospreys lock
https://www.irwinmitchell.com/news-and-insights/podcast#ep56 – Managing and Preventing Injury in Sport
Higher Education Academy Network
The starting point for anyone involved in lecturing in Higher Education (HE) and/or Further Education (FE) is the Higher Education Academy Network. The Higher Education Academy Network offers the opportunity to share ideas and develop them with like-minded colleagues in your own subject area. The Higher Education Academy Network for Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism is one of 24 subject centres that make up the Generic Centre. This provides information on learning and teaching in sports related areas and the aim of this Centre is to share good practice in learning and teaching.
