Professional development
in the sports industry
Assignment 1- Part 3
◦ In the form of a written report using the career pathway
selected. You must assess whether you have the appropriate
skill set to pursue the selected career.
◦ If there are any gaps in your skills audit to pursue the career
pathway of your choice you should provide a summary of
these, and highlight what you can do to overcome these gaps.
ILO
◦ The development plan should have specific relevance to the
requirements of intended sports career and skills audit
outcomes.
◦ You must include in your career development plan:
 Training aims
 Educational aims
 Experiential aims
 Professional development activities
◦ In the development plan you must identify the timescales for
each of the targets that you set yourself for development.
Introduction
◦ Having completed a detailed skills audit, the next stage is to produce an action plan. This is a plan that shows
how to achieve the career and job you want. In most cases this will be a long-term plan and so it is helpful to have
a staged approach, over months and years. As part of the action planning you need to identify key timescales that
you can relate to achieving particular tasks to help you accomplish your career goal. These timescales could be
immediate or could take place over a number of years. For each of these timescales, identify any training or
educational needs and experience you will need to achieve. You should also have a clear plan for how you will
complete each step.
Analysis of your interests, accomplishments, experience and
qualifications
Use your skills audit to assess whether your current interests,
accomplishments, experience and qualifications align to your chosen
career pathway (refer back to development pathway in report).
This was completed as part 2 of your assignment 1
Consider the following questions and
answer them in a few paragraphs:
◦ REMEMBER!!!: The information given here must match the
information in your skills audit.
◦ Are any of your interests relevant to your chosen job?
◦ Will any of your accomplishments be of help in achieving your chosen job?
E.g. coaching certificates, full attendance at school, sporting
accomplishments.
◦ Are there any gaps in terms of your accomplishments? E.g. Would you need
to do some volunteering to help you achieve your chosen job?
◦ Are any of your past experiences (sporting, leadership, work and travel)
relevant to your job?
◦ Is there any experience that would be beneficial for you to gain? E.g. work
experience, leadership roles, part-time jobs?
◦ Do you have any of the required qualifications to get your chosen job?
◦ What qualifications do you still need to achieve? E.g. A Levels, degree etc.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND
Analysis of skill set
◦ Use the skills and qualities needed to do your chosen job successfully
◦ These have all been completed previously – see completed skills audit.
◦ See table on moodle to complete this task
◦ You need to explain whether you have the correct skill set to pursue this career.
Gaps in skill set
◦ You need to summarise any gaps in your skills/experience/qualifications that you have identified either in part
a.) or part b.). A gap is basically any skills/qualities/experience etc that you don’t currently have, that you will
need to secure your chosen job in the future.
◦ Remember: Your report should tell you exactly what you need to do to get your chosen job, so refer back to this.
◦ You also need to explain what you could do to overcome these gaps.
◦ Make a list of the gaps in your skills audit. i.e. the skills that you have given 3 marks or less in your table or those
identified in part a.).
◦ Explain how can you improve these skills?
CDAP
◦ Career development action plan (CDaP) Putting everything together into a specific career development action
plan (CDAP) is key to providing a framework for your career development and producing a roadmap for future
progression. What should be in a CDaP? As well as all of the detail in your earlier skills audit, a CDAP should
also contain:
◦ ▸▸ your short, medium and long-term goals – what is important in your career and life?
◦ ▸▸ your current list of competencies, skills and abilities from your skills audit – what can you offer an
organisation?
◦ ▸▸ your development needs, including broad aims and SMARTER goals
◦ ▸▸ how to specialise in certain areas
◦ ▸▸ achieved milestones
◦ ▸▸ milestones yet to be achieved. Who can help you achieve these goals? What blocks do you need to overcome?
CDAP
SMARTER Targets
Example of a career action plan for BTEC
sport