K Story Guide – Student Athlete

LET’S TALK ABOUT your athletic experience:

Athletics is an opportunity for students to learn how to work with others toward a common goal as well as work together with a diverse group of people. By participating in athletics, you learn how to work as a team by learning through your own and others’ mistakes. As being a part of a sport requires collaboration with others, you must be able to take accountability for your own action to establish a solid plan with fellow teammates. Athletics is a space for you to grow as a person as you and your teammates spend a lot of time reflecting on previous mistakes and how improvements can be made to create a better game plan.

LET’S TALK ABOUT the transferable skills acquired:

  1. Career and Self-Improvement: Athletics requires you to do a lot of self-reflection, which allows you to identify your own strengths and
    weaknesses. When working as a team in a sport, you must be able to take constructive criticism and apply it to areas where you need more improvement. In athletics, everything is a group effort, which requires you to take accountability for your own decisions to be able work towards the collective end goal of the team.
  2. Communication: The ability to communicate effectively and actively with your teammates is an important skill within athletics. Athletics requires everyone to come together to establish a plan before or during a game. This includes communicating in a manner that still encourages everyone’s strengths while establishing a plan on how everyone can improve in areas where they lack. Athletics also requires you to ask for help when needed, so you can receive support from your fellow teammates.
  3. Professionalism: A development of mutual respect is essential to athletics as it can be frustrating when the original plan is not working or when mistakes are being made. This applies to fellow teammates, coaches, officials and opponents. Athletics requires you to manage your frustration, especially when you or your teammates are making mistakes, and learn how to effectively communicate the issue with others.
  4. Critical Thinking: Athletics can be a stressful, fast-paced environment. Therefore, adaptability is an important skill to have when the team’s original plan is not working. This requires you to think quickly on new effective strategies to work toward winning a game. Another skill that is important is being observant, as you may need to observe how the other team is playing, so you can tailor your team’s game planning in the most effective way possible. This may include making quick decisions or reconvening with your teammates on what is not working and what improvements can be made. Teamwork/Collaboration: In athletics, you must work together with your team to identify issues and work together to solve these issues. As a team, everyone must learn how to work together, which includes team-building exercises to improve the team’s chemistry during a game. By working on the team’s chemistry with each other, it makes collaboration on game strategies more effective, as everyone is more aware of their teammates’ strengths that may be useful during a game.

LET’S TALK ABOUT sample resume action statements:

  • Collaborate with teammates to create an effective game plan.
  • Establish new strategies when there is a flaw in the original plan.
  • Foster an inclusive community to encourage everyone to be the best version of themselves.
  • Coordinate with the teammates on game plays and positions during a game.
  • Establish an academic system to ensure everyone is working towards their academic goals.

CCPD TIPS

Behavioral Interview Prompts:

Employers often ask questions about how you responded to specific situations.


For example:

  • Tell me about a time when you experienced a conflict while working on a team.
  • Describe a time when you had to work well under pressure.
  • Give me an example of a time when you showed initiative and took the lead.
  • Tell me about a time when you made a mistake, and how you handled it.


S.T.A.R. METHOD

You can use STAR as a framework to structure your response to behavioral
interview questions.

  • Describe the context and background for a Situation that’s relevant to the question.
  • Explain the Task that needed to be completed. What was the goal?
  • Outline specific Actions you took. How did you exhibit transferable skills?
  • Share the Results of your actions. What was the outcome? What did you learn?