How to incorporate your sports achievement into your CV

How to incorporate your sports achievement into your CV

Sports is a great way to gain those key soft skills you need for your future career. Most people forget to include their sports involvement and achievements on their CV. However, this is a very useful activity and can help your CV stand out!

 

First define your sports

 

Best practice for CV and application writing is to keep a list of all the career related activities you do.

 

This can span everything from books you’ve read, Ted Talks you’ve watched to the sports you get involved in. Each time you apply to a job you can use this list to easily think about all the relevant information you want to include.

 

When thinking about your sports you need to define the activity you’ve got involved with. Try asking yourself the following questions …

1. What was the sports?
2. Was I playing solo, as a part of a team or even a team leader?
3. How have I improved playing this sport?
4. What skills have I learnt from this sport?
5. Did I achieve anything specific?

 

An example answer to these questions would be:

1. Tennis.
2. Playing men’s doubles & co-captain of my tennis team.
3. I’ve worked on improving my speed and communication skills through rigorous weekly practice exercises.
4. Communication, Teamwork, Motivation, Time Management and Interpersonal skills. (To see a full list of soft skills read our blog here)
5. I came third in my University Men’s Double Tournament and lead my team to win our division in the university tennis series.

Once you’ve done this for each sport you are involved with, and do mention any sport you have tried, you will have a super useful list of your achievements.

 

Second add to your CV

 

You can use your list of sports achievements to add the relevant ones to your CV. We recommend altering your CV to each job you have applied for, so it is tailored specifically to that role.

 

There are three different areas you can place these achievements. Either you can list them in your ‘Work Experience’ section, or you can list them in your ‘Academic’ section or describe them in your ‘Interests’ section.

 

Work Experience

 

You add your sporting achievements in your work experience section. Simply title the job role as ‘Sports Person’ and then put either your university or if the sports is not part of your university then put the name of the local organisation or club. Underneath this you can describe your sports achievements with the answers you have detailed from the questions at the beginning of this blog. Try this approach if you don’t have much experience on your CV and therefore have space in the ‘Work Experience’ section.

 

For example:

 

Sports Person, University of Bath, September 2020 – June 2020

• At University I played men’s doubles and was the co-captain of my tennis team.
• I came third in my University Men’s Double Tournament and lead my team to win our division in the university tennis series.
• Develop great communication skills playing doubles, whilst building interpersonal and leadership skills in my co-captain position. I have also learnt time-management skills through balancing my university work and sports commitments.

 

 

Academic

 

You can also add your sporting achievements in your academic section. Most commonly people list their academic studies, and then they bullet point key university achievements underneath e.g. top grades, scholarships etc. This is also where you can list your sports achievements.

 

For example:

 

University of Bath, BA History, September 2020 – June 2023

Expected 2:1

• Student Representative for History
• Achieved 1^st in my dissertation project; ‘A Study on Health during the Medieval Period’
• Co-captain of the Men’s VI team. I came third in my University Men’s Double Tournament and lead my team to win our division in the university tennis series.

 

Interests

 

You add your sporting achievements in your interest’s section. This is helpful as you can go into more or less depth depending on space. If you have more relevant information in your skills section, you can prioritise that and briefly list your sports achievement. If you have more space, then you can go into more detail.

 

For example:

 

At University I played men’s doubles and was the co-captain of my tennis team. I came third in my University Men’s Double Tournament and lead my team to win our division in the university tennis series. Playing doubles has helped develop great communication skills, whilst building interpersonal and leadership skills in my co-captain position. I have also learnt time-management skills through balancing my university work and sports commitments.

 

Third add to your Application

 

When adding your sports achievements to your application you can use the STAR method. The STAR method is a commonly used structure to formulate your answers. It stands for …

 

• Situation
• Task
• Action
• Result

 

You can use STAR to structure your answer to questions in interviews or applications.

 

For example, if someone asks you … ‘tells us about a time you overcame an obstacle’ you would answer using the STAR format.

 

1.        You would briefly describe the situation (ideally in one or two sentences)

2.        Next you would clearly define the task or desired outcome of the situation

3.        Then you would explain the actions you took to resolve the situation

4.        Finally, you would declare the result of your action and how that brought about the desired outcome

 

You can use this to write about your sports achievements. For example, if the application is looking for teamwork or leadership skills you could describe a situation in which you developed these skills through sports.

 

For example:

 

At University I played tennis and was elected by my peers to co-captain our tennis team. I was in charge of organising our team and help lead the team to perform well in The University Tennis League. In order to do so I decided to schedule regular social session to get our team to bond better, as teamwork is important aspect of tennis. I also listen to my team and use their feedback to schedule more fitness session as we felt this was needed to improve our performance. I learnt a lot from leading the team, such as interpersonal skills. My leadership strategy paid off and I am proud to say our team won the University Tennis League for our division.