Career Progression: What is next for me after I complete my Undergraduate Degree?

Highlighted below is my Personal Development Plan which I have created, outlining my personal areas for development, and how I intend to develop these areas. Once I graduate for my undergraduate degree in July 2015 I want to progress into a Sports Marketing and Business related career. Preferably sporting, due to great interest in sport, particularly football, but I would also diversify into general marketing to open up more graduate level careers, and a better chance of career progression. I have decided that my next steps once I graduate is to complete a MSc Sports Marketing and Business Management Degree from the University of Central Lancashire, either one year on campus, of via a part time online degree. This is dependent on whether I secure the Isle of Man CGAIOM Internship. This is something I'm aiming to obtain and would be perfect for my career development, as it would be provide me with industry based experience, put theory into practice, and develop my transferable skills. Not to forget, it is based on the Isle of Man, where I am from, and would be great to obtain industry based experience from the Island. Regardless of what happens in the forthcoming months, I will complete a Masters Degree and obtain a sports marketing related placement in order to complete my consultancy project and gain industry base experience which will help me obtain a graduate level job in the forthcoming years.

Please see my Personal Development Plan for specific plans:

References:
Resume-surgeon. (2015). How to Show Career Progression on Your Resume. Available: http://www.resume-surgeon.com/blog/how-to-show-career-progression-on-your-resume. Last accessed 25th April 2015.

A sample of some of my placement tasks to date & Placement Supervisor Reference:

Below is a series of images portraying some of the work I have produced during my time on placement. Again. some of this has already been highlighted in previous posts, but here is a post just for evidence. Unfortunately I cannot upload the SSP conference video due to file size.

Once I had completed my 60 hours of placement, and prior to submitting my portfolio of work for my placement module, I asked me placement supervisor (K. Loughran - South Ribble School Sports Partnership Manager) for a reference with regards to my placement duties, my personal performance, any my upcoming tasks for June and in the foreseeable future.
See the reference below:

This reference from my placement supervisor brilliantly sums up some of my placement duties and performance. As initially highlighted in my beginning posts, my aims were developing my understanding of marketing communications, in both digital and print communications, and this is evidenced by the input in the social media platforms, and liaison with the local press. Also with the upcoming task of publishing celebratory brochures and posters highlighting our events for all of the schools in the South Ribble Borough.
In addition, as mentioned in the 2nd paragraph I will be working with South Ribble School Sports Partnership and the School Games for the Lancashire School Games Final, being held at the end of June in Blackpool. For this, I will helping out create a celebratory booklet and posters for schools, as well as creating another SSP video montage of the Lancashire School Games Final event, and the establishment of a SSP YouTube Channel to provide our target markets a source to find all of our video montages from past events.

These upcoming placement experiences, will further develop my communication skills, organisation, creativity, professionalism team working and independent working, and will be another key learning experience I can reflect upon to develop my self-awareness and overall employability.

I think that the last paragraph in the reference really sums up my time on placement, and I am happy that my placement supervisor considers me to be a great addition to the SSP team, always professional in all aspects, shows flexibility to additional tasks, and this has therefore resulted in the upcoming duties of me helping out with marketing and PR for the Lancashire School Games Final in June.

All in all, I consider my placement experience to be a great experience and a personal success. I was very happy to be given this brilliant undergraduate sports marketing placement, with a school sports company who had little input into digital communications and leasing with the press. I believe that all of my duties I carried out from October 2014 - April 201 have been very interesting and provided me with a lot of work, responsibility, and created many experiences I can now reflect back upon to develop my overall employability.

By linking in my placement experiences in the Career EDGE model, I can safely say that I have experienced all five key components on the foundation of the model, and have reflected upon my main experiences which have made me aware of my strengths, and future improvements. I hope that this placement will help me to progress into a career in sports marketing, or general marketing, and will be a great addition to my Curriculum Vitae. In addition, this blog will serve as a great reflective piece of work of all of my placement experiences and can be used for future employers to see what I am capable of when only taking up a part time placement module. I believe I can now take what I have learnt from my placement experiences, and personal skills into another internship, postgraduate degree or full time job, and keep developing myself and my employability skills.

Placement work sample images:

Evidence of Emails for Press Releases:

Sample of 1^st Press Release sent to Lancashire Evening Post:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Thomas Downward

South Ribble School Sports Partnership

07514 205386

tdownward@uclan.ac.uk

Key Stage 2 Balshaw’s and Worden Cluster Sports Hall Athletics Event

South Ribble School Sports Partnership (SSP) are holding the Level 2 inter-school KS2 Sports Hall Athletics primary schools event for the ‘Balshaw’s and Worden Cluster’ on Tuesday 25^th November at 9:30am – 12:00pm at the Academy @ Worden High School, Leyland. The primary school event is set to see up to 180 KS2 pupils participate in the Sports Hall Athletics event which comprises of various track and field events held in the host’s venue indoor facilities. The event will be an excellent opportunity for all the pupil’s school teachers, and parents to come and watch their children participate in an exciting, yet competitive primary school sports event which really shows the spirit of school sport events.

Thomas Downward, South Ribble School Sport Partnership Marketing, said “The SSP is a select cohort of PE Teachers from various schools in South Ribble, who work together to deliver primary school sporting events to Key Stages 1& 2. Each event held offers all pupils an excellent opportunity to implement their learnt fundamental skills into fun, yet competitive sporting events against other school teams, which always proves to be an brilliant event for all participants and spectators ”.

Kevin Loughran SSP Partnership Manager said “There are 5 yr 5/6 local cluster sports hall athletics event following the 2 yr 3-4 events earlier this term. Over 40 schools will take part and over 800 children will take part in the athletics events that the SSP team are organising. Added to this, all the secondary schools will send teams to the year 7/8 events at Lostock Academy in early December which will mean over 1000 young people competing in athletics in November and December”.

The SSP team host various primary school sports event throughout the academic calendar, comprising of ‘sports hall athletics, multi-skills, tennis and netball events to name a few. In addition, the SSP team holds ‘Spar Level 3 events’, in which school teams compete to qualify for the ‘Spar Level 3 finals’, which are competed in, primary girl’s football, mini tennis, rounder’s, handball, tag rugby, super 8’s athletics, swimming and girls cricket.

For further information on each upcoming event, please contact the ‘noted contacts’ in the press release.

Ends

For further information, please contact:

Thomas Downward

07514 205386

Kevin Loughran

07795 812761

Notes to editors:

1.      Photographs are available on request from previous primary school sports events

Sample of a typical Press Release sent to Lancashire Evening Post:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:

Thomas Downward

South Ribble School Sports Partnership

07514 205386

tdownward@uclan.ac.uk

Level 2 Inter-Schools KS2 Years 5/6 Sports Hall Athletics Primary Schools Final:

The South Ribble School Sports Partnership (SSP) is holding the Level 2 Inter-School KS2 Years 5/6 Sports Hall Athletics Primary Schools Final on Tuesday 20^th January 2015 at Lostock Hall Academy, Todd Lane North. The event will be broken down into two finals, one ‘larger primary schools’ final in the morning and the ‘small school’s final in the afternoon. The morning event, starting at 9:30am and finishing at 12pm will comprise of 12 primary schools with 350 participants from around the borough competing in various track and field events held in the host’s venue indoor facilities. The afternoon event starting at 1:15pm and finishing at 2:45pm will comprise of 6 smaller primary schools with 75 participants. The highest scoring school from the Brownedge and Worden Partnership will be invited to progress through to the Level 3 Lancashire School Games Final on Wednesday 4^th March 2015 for the larger primary schools, and Thursday 12^th March 2015 for the small schools final.

The two finals will be an excellent opportunity for all the pupil’s school teachers, and parents to come and watch their children participate in an exciting and competitive primary school sports event which really shows the spirit of school sport events.

The SSP team host various primary school sports events throughout the academic calendar, comprising of ‘sports hall athletics, multi-skills, tennis and netball events to name a few. In addition, the SSP team holds ‘Spar Level 3 events’, in which school teams compete to qualify for the ‘Spar Level 3 finals’, which are competed in, primary girl’s football, mini tennis, rounder’s, handball, tag rugby, super 8’s athletics, swimming and girls cricket.

For further information on upcoming events and to keep up to date with the South Ribble School Sport Partnership please follow us on Twitter @SouthRibbleSSP, or alternatively please contact the ‘noted contacts’ in the press release.

Ends

For further information, please contact:

Thomas Downward

07514 205386

Kevin Loughran

07795 812761

Notes to editors:

1.      More photographs are available on request from previous primary school sports events

Sample Photos from South Ribble’s Level 2 Sports Hall Athletics events:

                Sample of a common response from the Lancashire Evening Post:

Sample of a follow up email to Lancashire Evening Post on event results:

Sample of the South Ribble School Sports Partnership Website I created:

Sample of the SSP Twitter Page I regularly maintained:

            Sample of the SSP Facebook Page I created: (Early stages of development)

Linking my placement experiences to the academic theory:

Throughout my time on my Careers in Sport sports marketing placement I used various models of reflection to critically reflect back upon my experiences, to help determine my strengths, weaknesses and future improvements. This post will bring together the majority of my key placement experiences and link into the theoretical models of reflection. In addition I will use Dacre Pool and Sewell's 'Career Edge - Key to employability model' as a foundation for my placement experiences, as this model provides a basis of the key components which are absolutely essential in order to create a graduates key employability skills ( Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007). The employability model can be see again below, as it illustrates the five key components a graduate needs to develop to strengthen their employability skills.

Career Edge Model - (Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007) 

By using this employability model it enables me as a graduate to understand what key components I need to work upon in order to make me 'employable' to future employers. 

With much research pointing to work experience as being something that prospective employer’s value greatly in graduates (Brown and Hesketh, 2004), I felt that by undergoing this module placement would enable me to achieve all of the core components on the employability model. This is because my placement allowed me to gain work experience, enable me to put my learnt theoretical knowledge into practice, develop core general skills, such as communication, team working and confidence, and also develop my emotional intelligence, such as understanding my own and people's thoughts and emotions.

The image below shows an metaphorical model of employability, and shows that by undergoing the five core fundamental components, you can then reflect upon your key experiences and make firm evaluates on your own personal performance, which can help develop your 'self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-esteem'. Once all of these key components have been identified and critically reflected upon, you can use all of your experiences and personal development to unlock employability.

As a brief overview of all of the current tasks which I have been assignment to complete over the placement I have completed the following:

• Attend weekly primary school sports events: I helped organise the event on the day, as well obtain feedback from the pupils and the teachers. In addition, I took photos and videos as part of our official SSP Social Media Sites and Website Page. One consideration I had to take into account was data protection. As preliminary highlighted in my Negotiated Learning Agreeing Form I identified that releasing photos of particular students on public sites which were not allowed was an issues I had to adhere to. Therefore before each event I went around all of the schools and identified which pupils couldn't have their photos taken, and therefore they simply wouldn't be photographed during the event and put on our official SSP internet pages. This experience developed a whole array of my transferable skills, including, communication, confidence, team working, professional image, responsibility, leadership, and commitment to turn up to each event on a regular basis.
• Lease with the Local press at the Lancashire Evening Post. My task here was to email a press release to the LEP before each event, informing them on the key details of our event. Our aim here was to either get a reporter to visit one of our events, or for the LEP to publish one of our events in the local newspapers. After the events I would send out a follow up report, informing the LEP the results of the event, as well as the best photos from the event too. This task developed my written communication skills especially, as well as developing my time management skills, and professional image.
• Regular development of the Official SSP Website Page and Social Media Sites. Before each event I would post an upcoming status on our upcoming events to inform the schools what events were taking place and where. Then after each event I would publish the results of the events on our Twitter page and Website, along with photos and videos of the event too. This task was a key learning experience for me, and developed my time management skills, due to managing two sites on a regular basis. This helped to further develop my independent working skills, responsibility. In addition, my creativity and imagination skills were considerably developed throughout this placement task as I had to ensure that the posts on Twitter and the creation of our brand new Website were exciting and engaging platforms for our target marketing to follow us on. Therefore this task really helped me to develop a whole array of transferable skills, and this had significantly helped my achieve the Career Edge component of 'generic skills'.
• Attending the Annual South Ribble School Sports Conference. As highlighted in my previous post, at the end of March 2015, I attended the SSP conference which comprised of a number of Primary School Physical Education teachers and Head Teachers coming along as a day of developing their understanding of what the SSP do as a partnership and our current initiatives. My role on the day was taking three workshops for the delegates. Each workshop lasted for 20 minutes and there was 10-12 teachers per group. My role was to inform the delegates on what we do as a partnership, and are developing in terms of digital marketing and communications. Therefore I talked about the social media development and our new website. Prior to the event I created a workshop power point for each delegate to work from, and this provided them with the access to test out of new website and social media sites, to really understand how we as a partnership are trying to expand into the digital market. This experience considerably developed my communication and confidence skills when talking to the delegates, and also developed my professionalism. In addition my decision making skills were also tested, as I have to make on the spot decisions throughout the workshops. My preparation skills was also strengthening due to having to create a power point prior to the workshops, as well as create a 20 minute SSP video montage which was being projected to the delegates during the conference intervals. Therefore, my creativity was again being developed when creating this video montage, as well as my time management.
• One of my other tasks was to attend termly SSP team meetings. These meetings would usually last around two hours and comprised of a review of the previous term, and then our upcoming duties and events. My task for each meeting was to show the team my developments with regards to our Social Media sites, and our website. These meetings also gave me the opportunity to ask my team mates their opinions on certain aspects of the digital marketing communications, to ensure that it wasn't just my input all the time. This task helped to develop my organisation skills, team working skills, and also my decision making and patience, due to gaining perspectives from my team mates before jumping into decisions without others thoughts.

Therefore, as previously highlighted. these were my main placement duties in brief. These duties were carried out on a regular basis and had many learning experiences throughout the way. 

Please see my upcoming post of some evidence of placement duties I carried out, as well as a reference from my placement supervisor on my current placement performance.

From undergoing these key learning experiences I then used the following self-reflective models to reflect upon my experiences and determine significant areas of success and future improvement. 

The models which I used to reflect upon my experiences were:

• Gibbs (1988) Reflection Cycle - Learning by doing model (see below).

• Kolb's  (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle - (see below)

• Schon's (1991) Concept of 'Reflection in Action' and 'Reflection on Action'. This Linked into the Chimp Paradox Mind Management Model too (see below)

• Johari's Window of self- awareness. Model linking into emotional intelligence and stages after reflection stage. (see below). 

Overall, I used these models throughout my placement experience, especially, Schon's 'reflection in action' during my learning experiences on placement, and then 'reflection on action' after each experience. The Gibbs and Kolbs Experiential Learning cycle models were used together at the end of my placement experiences. I worked through each stage of the cycle to identify what I had done on placement, what were my thoughts on my experience (successful or unsuccessful), and then analysed how I would make the outcomes more successful in future situations.
The Johair's Window was a model I used a throughout and also after my placement experiences. This model helped me to develop my emotions and understand not only my emotions, but of other people to. This helped me develop a appreciation of my thoughts and my decisions (which linked into managing my 'inner chimp' (mind) during decision making tasks. In addition, the model helped me to develop thoughts of other people, and what they may think of me, and this help to develop my self-awareness, confidence and esteem.

Looking at the academic literature on emotion intelligence, emotional Intelligence is all about how people recognise, use, understand and recognise emotion (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). It is very important for me as an university student and soon becoming a graduate, to understand emotional intelligence, as higher levels of EI have better social relationships, academic achievement, work performance and psychological well being (Mayer, Roberts and Barsade, 2008). In addition, high emotional intelligence in the workplace influences good work performance (O'boyle Jr, et al., 2010), leadership (Kerr, et al., 2006), team working (Vitello-Cicciu, 2001), and also good confidence in emotional abilities predicts graduate employability (Dacre Pool and Qualter, 2013). Therefore by developing an understanding of my emotions and my team mates on placement could help my identify areas of common knowledge known by all, and blind and hidden areas (Johari's window) to identify people emotions which not everyone knows. This helped to develop our team working skills and work performance.

References:

Brown, P., Hesketh. A.J. (2004). The mismanagement of talent: Employability and jobs in the knowledge economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dacre Pool, L., Sewell, P. (2007). The key to employability: developing a practical model of graduate employability. Education + Training, 49 (4) p277 – 289.

Dacre Pool, L., Qualter, P. (2013).  Emotional Self-Efficacy, Graduate Employability and Career Satisfaction: Testing the Associations. Australian Journal of Psychology. 65(4).

Kerr, R., Garvin, J., Heaton, N., Boyle, E. (2006).  Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness.  Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27(4), p265–279.

Mayer, J.D., Roberts, R.D., Barsade, S.G. (2008).  Human Abilities: Emotional Intelligence.  Annual Review of Psychology, 59, p507–536.

Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. (1997).  What Is Emotional Intelligence?  In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for educators. New York: Basic Books.

O’Boyle, Jr., E.H., Humphrey, R.H., Pollack, J.M., Hawver, T.H., Story, P.A. (2010). The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis.  Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(5), p788-818. 

Vitello-Cicciu, J.M. (2001). Leadership Practices and Emotional Intelligence of Nursing Leaders (unpublished dissertation), Santa Barbara, CA., Fielding Graduate Institute. Cited in Vitello-Cicciu, J.M. (2003).  Emotional Intelligence. Nursing Management, October, 2003.