Happy National Athletic Training Month 2022!
To coincide with this year’s theme, Providing Health Care Everywhere, we’re going to be highlighting some unique job settings that athletic trainers have entered into during their careers. The NATA classifies these jobs as Emerging Settings in athletic training, listing healthcare administration, armed forces, occupational health, performing arts, physician practice, and public safety as examples. Many of the athletic trainers have taken their careers far beyond these settings, demonstrating how the field of athletic training provides transferable skills to many other job settings.
Most jobs, athletic training included, require a combination of skills. Some skills, such as the ability to evaluate an injury, are hard skills. Hard skills are teachable and easy to quantify and evaluate. Skills such as leadership, communication, and time management are known as soft skills. Hard and soft skills both makeup transferable skills, but what sets them apart is that they can be used in multiple professional settings. These skills are important to highlight for any job seeker, but especially for those seeking a job in an entirely different field. Transferable skills worth adding to your resume include:
- Time management
- Communication
- Research and analysis
- Teamwork
- Problem-solving
- Personal development
- Mentoring
- Developing relationships with third parties
- Handling complaints
Transferable skills are part of your career tool belt, and at each job, volunteer experience, or educational experience you’ve had, you’ve likely gained or improved in some of these skills. Employers look for people with transferable skills because they can tap into them when needed. Taking your transferable skills and using them to overcome new challenges shows an employer that you’re versatile and adaptable. For athletic trainers who want to move into an Emerging Setting, knowing what your transferable skills are will be critical in landing interviews or making a case for creating a new position, such as with a fire department.
Over the next month, you’ll learn from several athletic trainers who’ve taken their transferable skills and created new careers for themselves in areas many athletic trainers or athletic training students might’ve overlooked.
Again, Happy National Athletic Training Month!