How to Create a Winning Athletic Resume
The staple of any job seeker is a resume. Unfortunately most people use a boring, average resume that gets lost in the pile of thousands of applicants. When you’re using just a paper resume, it’s hard to make yours stand out and grab someone’s attention.
College soccer recruiting is no different. You’re looking for a “job” (payment in the form of scholarships and financial aid for your service). Typically, you’d submit your Athletic Resume to a coach who receives hundreds from players all over the world. It’s not enough anymore to do just the bare minimum. Sending a letter or email to a coach isn’t enough. You can’t expect to send one letter and then get signed. You need to create an open dialogue – an interactive communication with the coach(es). You need to stand out. You need a unique identity.
What is your Personal Brand? Here is a quick refresher.
Creating a Dialogue – An Interactive Athletic Resume
The key to success is creating a two-way dialogue with each college coach. The first step in his process is usually through your athletic resume. However because you want to stand out, not fit in with everyone else, you need to create an interactive online player profile. A player profile serves as your “web portal” to the world, displaying your athletic information in a professional and functional way. This will allow you to “scale” your efforts (do the work once and reap the benefits of repeated visits by different coaches), and it allows your information to work for you around the clock. You’re able to have your profile up and make any improvements as you go long.
The 5 Keys to an Interactive Player Profile
1. Complete your Profile: Too many times, you see profiles that have barely any information, or worse – just the bare minimum filled out. To really get the use out of it, you should completely fill out each space available. Typically each profile will have a Personal, Academic and Athletic sections. Remember to put your coaches’ contact information. This provides college soccer coaches easy, accessible contact information.
2. Add Multimedia: Adding photos and videos makes your profile unique and personal. This makes you human, not just a name on a page. Multimedia also encourages interaction, which is our main goal with an online player profile.
3. Update Regularly: Once you set up your player profile, don’t forget about it! You should be updating it regularly, with your latest awards and accolades, latest game results and highlights, and upcoming schedules. This will keep college soccer coaches up-to-date and keep them engaged in your dialogue.
4. Be Accessible: Your profile should be updated with your current contact information. You should provide a professional outlet (specific phone numbers or email accounts) that you also check consistently. A newer option is social media. Most people will tell you not to engage in social media for fear of what you’re exposing, but I disagree with that. You need to take responsibility for your actions (and language) and use social media as a communication channel. Twitter and Facebook are communication channels just like email is. And you better believe that assistant coaches (the ones responsible for initial recruiting purposes) are using Facebook and Google to find information.
5. Social Proof: You should be using the power of social proof to your benefit. Your profile isn’t complete until you start to add references and testimonials. Who should you get them from? You should start with your high school and club coaches, but also any teachers you have good relationships with, or “bosses” you may have or volunteer for. This goes back to creating good relationships with people ahead of time, so that they’ll trust you and recommend you when the time comes.
