Athlete Resume Template: Student, Division 1, and More

What To Highlight in an Athlete Resume

Starting a career as a professional athlete takes determination, strength and passion. However, there is much more to this role than meets the eye and your job application must reflect those requirements. To secure an interview and stand out to hiring managers, you must create a resume highlighting your skills, experience and education that make you a great fit for the role. Job seekers should study the job description of the role they are applying for and consider the keywords and requirements that individual employers are looking for. Then, highlight these sought-after skills and qualifications within your professional athlete resume.

Structure of an Athlete Resume

There are three resume formats that you can choose from when creating your resume and you can make your decision by considering the level of work experience you have. Here are the resume formats you can choose from:

• Functional: If you are a student-athlete who hasn’t yet had much professional experience, a functional resume format allows you to showcase on your skill set instead of focusing on your minimal work experience. 

• Chronological: If you have more professional athletic experience, the chronological resume format will work well for you, as you can draw attention to your work experience. 

• Combination: If you want your resume to display your skills and work experience, you can use a combination resume format that gives equal importance to both. 

Header

The header section of your resume is vital to provide your contact information to the recruiter. The following details should be included in this section:

• Phone number
• Email address
• Full name
• Location 
• Professional social media links, such as your LinkedIn profile

Resume summary

A resume summary briefly describes your professional profile to the hiring manager, giving them an overview of your skills, achievements and goals. Your summary should only be two to three sentences long yet still relevant to the application and interesting to the recruiter. Here is an example: “Goal-oriented football player with three years of experience playing in the NCAA division as team captain while completing an athletic scholarship, in which I achieved a 3.0 GPA.”

Skills 

Regardless of which resume structure you choose, you will need to include a skills section in your resume. A student-athlete resume should focus more on skills as you won’t yet have extensive experience, so include as many relevant skills as possible. Here are some examples to use as an athlete:

• Teamwork and leadership skills
• Strong work ethic
• Ability to use Microsoft Office Suite 
• Communication skills
• Detail-oriented 
• Experience in running and taking part in training sessions
• Transferable skills, such as adaptability 
• Team member mentality 
• Experience competing in tournaments
• Time management

Work experience

You may be worried about your work experience section if you haven’t yet worked as a professional athlete. However, it is good to still include a brief rundown of the work experience you do have and there will likely be transferable skills from any past jobs you’ve had.  For example, teamwork is a transferable skill that many employers will look out for on athletic resumes. So, if you have previously worked as a team in a professional environment, t here is no reason not to include this in your resume.

Education

The majority of professional athletes will have taken part in some level of education to help them achieve their physical goals. So, whether you studied for a Bachelor of Arts in Sports Management or maybe you were a member of your high school athletic department or college athletics, these are all valuable experiences that you can incorporate into your education section.

Do's and Don'ts for an Athlete Resume

Now that you have seen a general overview of how a resume should be structured and what it should include, we have set out some do’s and don’ts to help you when it comes to writing your athlete resume:

Do:

• Use resume samples to help you stick to a professional structure. 
• Use bullet points for skill sections to make your resume easier to read. 
• Choose a structure based on your professional experience and skill set to ensure your resume represents you in the best way possible. 

Don’t:

• Write long paragraphs or sentences that will take a recruiter a long time to read. This will put them off reading your entire resume. 
• Include personal details regarding your athletic profile. 
• Include a hobbies section or any irrelevant information.