Taking up a sport can be a fun way to meet people, getting in some exercise or try something new. From your classics like rugby, netball and tennis to perhaps more unusual sports, taking part in a sport is a great way to build your employability.
Tara's story
Tara is a first year studying Maths and Physics here at Bath. Beyond getting drowned in work, Tara tries to stay afloat when competing in underwater hockey in Bristol. For those not familiar with underwater hockey, which is most of us, try to imagine hockey and swimming mushed into one bizarre but incredible game.
In Tara's words, 'It takes hours of practicing together to get used to how people play and learn to play together. Like puzzle pieces it can take a bit of rearranging to get the picture right. This is the first example of puzzle solving in underwater hockey the second being when you come up against another team. Despite having 3 directions you can move getting past people underwater is surprisingly hard, and it takes a lot of creative thinking sometimes to pass good players. When this isn’t easy it builds determination and resilience in players'.
Tara is now a Summer Student Worker at '' researching into plasma.
Building a skillset
Underwater hockey is one of few sports that will make employers do a double-take but the skills developed by it are not as unique as the sport. Although, the hard skills gained by playing might not be applicable to most jobs (unless you like to open excel spreadsheets underwater), there are lots of transferrable skills developed.
- Communication - It is not easy to verbally communicate underwater. The lack of easy communication means every player on the team must be dependable and where they need to be, the less dependable you are as a player the harder the rest of the team must work to score goals.
- Withstanding high pressure environments - Trying to think while running out of air is pretty hard. Learning to cope and then thrive in an unusual situation is useful in a career as well, although talking to stakeholders is not usually done underwater.
- Dedication and resilience - Any sport requires you to adapt to a new way of working and try to explore your strengths and weaknesses to be the best member of a team.
- Teamwork - Might be obvious but is a great skill developed by doing a team sport.
Diving into CV writing
When creating a CV, Careers recommends splitting your work experiences and other projects into two sections, one being Relevant Experiences that are directly related to what you are applying for. Then Other Experiences for other projects that may not be directly correlated to the application, but the transferrable skills are also there. This way you are able to put the most relevant recent work experience/project at the top of your CV.
Here is a CV entry for an internship in research into plasma that requires the skills in communication and requires the ability to adapt to a new environment.
Underwater Hockey
2024 - present
- In a team of 10 players, I communicated with my team members to effectively play against various intermediate teams to play to the best of our strengths. This has elevated my ability to confer with a team verbally in a high-pressure environment.
- Developed my resilience in adapting to a new environment by exploring my ability to adapt to a sport I was not familiar with, demonstrating my ability to learn in an ongoingly changing experience.
Respond
