While being an athlete will get you a closer look from many employers than others might receive, you cannot be careless or sloppy in how you prepare yourself for the job search. Interviewers are very keen at spotting applicants who look and act motivated and well prepared; they are even quicker to eliminate those who are not. To be as professional as possible, it is necessary to follow certain codes of behavior that are standard, accepted practices in job seeking. We shall call these the Rules of the Game and present them in five areas of the job-winning game: (1) making the initial contact, (2) dress, (3) preparing for the interview, (4) the interview, and (5) using your resume and cover letter.
1. Making the Initial Contact
- Call whoever in an organization is responsible for the department you'd like to work in and ask for an interview. State the specific position you desire. Be organized. Through research you should have discovered whom to call and the particular jobs he or she is responsible for.
- Be prepared to recount your qualifications for the job if you are asked on the phone.
- If the secretary of the department head refers you to the Personnel Department, call there for an interview, but ask if you may speak to the department head as well. If he or she refuses, do not persist in your request.
- You may precede your call by sending your resume and a cover letter, but that is not required. Do not depend upon a resume and letter to stimulate an employer to invite you for an interview.
- Precede any request for an interview with the name of the person who referred you (if any):
- If the organization's hiring officials cannot grant you an interview, ask where they would recommend that you apply. State your qualifications, so they can make an appropriate referral.
- Walk in. If other approaches frustrate you, use the most direct method of all. Go to employers without an appointment. This is sometimes inefficient, because you may get turned away or be asked to return at another time. It may work better in small organizations, where hiring procedures are often less formal. Dress appropriately wherever you go. Take an entire day's time. With persistence and some advance research, you should be able to get at least three walk-in interviews in a day.
Remember that any in-person contact, no matter how informal, requires that you dress suitably. It conveys your seriousness of purpose about the work that you are seeking. In order to have your appearance count in your favor, know in advance how the people dress in your target organization position you are applying for. Be conservative but not dull. Good dress does not call attention to itself. What shows is neatness, fit with the environment of the place of work, and tastefulness. Flashiness in colors, fabric designs, jewelry, or clothing styles is out of place and distracting. If you fit in comfortably with the way people dress at your potential workplace and can match their standards easily, that will make a positive statement about your suitability for the job.
3. Preparing for the Interview
- Perhaps the most common job-hunting error made by college graduates is failing to prepare for job interviews. Interviewers expect you to be interested in them and well versed in their organization. You must demonstrate your knowledge-ability by reading their literature closely and also by learning about how recent developments in the outside world have affected their field (check the newspaper and magazine guides in the library).
- Be sure you can talk about yourself clearly and concisely in terms of both your qualifications and your interest in the job and in the organization. Be fully prepared to answer why you want this particular job and believe you can do well in it.
- Have available a portfolio of any materials that are relevant to your past experiences. This should include a copy of your r6sum6 and might also include brochures of programs you have organized, papers you have written relevant to the job, reference letters, job descriptions of positions you have held, and any other evidence to support your belief that you have the skills and knowledge required for the job.
- Be early and alert for any interview, formal or informal. Take some time to look around the workplace, if you can do so without prying.
- Answer questions concisely but with enough detail to be clear and accurate.
- Ask questions about the nature of the work, the growth potential in the position, expectations of your performance, and other questions that show you are evaluating the job as well as being evaluated.
- Listen carefully to the interviewer's questions and statements, and ask for clarification whenever necessary.
- Don't be stiff in your behavior. Professionalism means being well organized and motivated but not artificial in your manner.
- Ask if you may meet with others whose work is related to the job for which you are applying.
- Be sure to tell the interviewer what you want him or her to know about you and your qualifications and why you believe you are a good candidate for the job, even if you are not asked directly. This is your main agenda.
Some experts believe the resume is used primarily to eliminate candidates and should therefore not be shown until an applicant has had a chance to state his or her own case in person. However, you may be requested to submit one in advance in order to be considered at all, in which case you have no choice.
- Seek advice regarding the layout, content, and printing of your resume from your college's career development or placement office before you commit yourself to its final form.
- Have your resume professionally typeset or prepared on a word processor, if possible.
- Always have your cover letter typed as an original, not typeset or copied.
- Make sure that both resume and cover letter are well written and that the grammar and spelling are correct. Poor writing is a favorite target for immediate elimination from consideration.
- A cover letter should always accompany a resume that is mailed, or a letter alone can be used. Whether you send a letter or both items, be sure they are addressed to an individual by name and title. If you do not know the person's title, you may write to him or her by name, but never write to a title without a name, because this suggests you were too lazy to do the proper research.
- Always follow up a letter and/or resume with a phone call, in which you request an interview.
- Always have a resume available during an interview, even if you sent one in advance. It is best to have several copies available.
Student-athletes must hustle in the labor market like anyone else. The Rules of the Game above require hard work and attention to detail, but they offer you the maximum chance for success in job hunting. If you are as thoroughgoing and professional as possible in your approach, your efforts-and the advantages you have as an athlete-will pay off. Many employers like and respect collegiate athletes and believe that they are very capable and motivated people to hire. However, they know that not all athletes are equally good bets. Thus, you must demonstrate your worth as a potential employee by conducting your job search with the same measure of discipline and perseverance that you used to manage your athletic and nonathletic activities during college.
HOW YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU ARE WINNING
What is your definition of "success" for yourself? All members of a team agree that winning the game is their immediate goal, but a win in the career arena varies according to what you regard as most important. What is so important to you that a career must provide it? What would make you choose one job over another? Money, independence, security, work environment, subject matter, social status, opportunity for achievement, creativity, advancement-all of these matter and more, but for a particular person, one or two motives will predominate. What is most important to you?
Winning outside of sports is seldom measurable by numbers, except with respect to money. You will recognize your career victories by an overall feeling that "This is where I want to be, I feel most like myself, and am motivated to keep doing more of what I am doing." But, such satisfaction is not automatic. It comes only when you know what motivates you, what you want from a job.
A job is just a job, a way to earn money. But a career is an expression of yourself. A job is a career only if it drives you from inside, as your sport did (or still does). What do you think will push you to do your best? Money? Fame? Contact with people? Achievement or creative expression? Responsibility for others? Challenging the marketplace? Name your own!
Career counselors call these "work values." If you are foggy about your values, you will make poor choices of work. Most people agree they want certain things in their work-security, stimulation, enjoyable people to work with-but which of these is crucial when you have to decide among alternatives? Which values are you willing to sacrifice in favor of others? Will you surrender some security in exchange for a financial challenge? Will you sacrifice a pleasurable lifestyle in order to have more achievement possibilities (e.g., taking a high-powered job in a location where you don't particularly want to live)? Agents for pro athletes are close to the action, but the job has pressures and a hectic lifestyle. How do you weigh these values against each other? Certain jobs have security, but is there enough stimulation for you? All of these are value choices, trading less of one value for more of another.
Athletes share many common values by having chosen sports for a prominent part of their lives, but they wander all over the map in terms of what they want most from a career. There is no such thing as a career an athlete would most prefer. Some want to set the business world on fire, while others prefer public service, and still others seek the creativity and independence of education, arts, and other fields. In every field of work, you will find former athletes, and you'll see them creating new fields as well.
Values are the lifeblood of any career decision. How will you know when you have "won" your game? Knowing what you want from your career will increase your chances of winning. Know your own career values and you are halfway home.
Every game plan has within it the seeds of its own success. You have a reason to believe you are going to make it and should trust your own instincts, whether you aspire to be a nuclear physicist, a professional golfer, or a real estate tycoon. If everything goes according to plan, you probably don't need our advice. However, the real trick in any game plan, the key to whether these seeds will flower, is what you do when something goes wrong, as many things probably will.
Dave wanted to start a magazine about sports teams and leagues in his local area. He is only a fair writer, has little capital to invest, and almost no experience in journalism. But he knew he wanted to do this, felt there was a need and a market for his product, and was determined to try. He got a job selling advertisements for another magazine (not sports-related) and started to meet people in the magazine trade. He looked around for partners, people with the talents he would need to start his magazine-editorial talent, organizational skills, etc.-and asked them to make their services available on a contract basis when he was ready to begin. Dave then hustled some advertising commitments for his new magazine, got advice for a marketing plan from a friend of a friend who is an expert in marketing of publications, then felt ready to put his "game" into operation. He sold enough ads to assure that the first issue would not lose money, and set out to hire the editorial talent he needed. He did not quit his present job; instead, he resolved to put out one issue and see if he could enroll a certain number of subscribers, to measure the likely future of his publication. Dave published one issue, now has 1,500 subscribers, has acquired half the ads necessary for the next issue, and feels he is six months away from quitting his job to work on the magazine full-time.
If Dave's magazine fails, will he have wasted his time? No! The lessons of a game plan are used and applied long after the original goal is sought, regardless of the results. You cannot be sure of outcomes, but you can be sure that using game plans will build your powers of self-determination and self-direction, and will make you more effective in seeking future goals, because you will have learned to channel your energies and organize your activities to obtain the things you desire.
Learning how to build success starts in your imagination and then extends to rewriting the script as necessary. Careers are "won" by first having reasons to believe you will succeed, maintaining these beliefs in the face of setbacks, and removing the obstacles to success as they occur. Until you can see, in your mind's eye, how all this will develop, it does not even exist. Once you see it, and the sequence of events forms a clear and motivating picture, you are ready to put your game plan into action.
