Career Tips Guides

When sport became professionalized athletes began searching for ways to improve their performances. For sports the physical aspect was predominant and athletes sought their way for golden medals at regular doctors. Sport became an industry and the need for specialized physicians grew. This brought a new specialization in medicine; sports medicine. Here after further specialization progressed and sports nutrition became a specialization in sports medicine.

Sport and physical health in general became popular, to practice and also as a form of entertainment. A new and profitable industry was born where many people make there living as does the specialist in sports nutrition. The study of sports nutrition was popular among younger students. The idea of working with famous athletes, or better yet becoming a better athlete themselves was the driving force for and maybe still is the driving force for this study.

The curriculum of this study focuses on understanding how the body functions during exercise and sport. The goal is to maximize the athletic potential and minimizing health risks.

This study provides a scientific background, specific knowledge and skills to address concepts and controversies relating to sports nutrition, sports physiology and to explore the links between nutrition, physiology, performance and health outcomes through the life cycle.

The educational principles integrate nutrition and exercise physiology and application to exercising individuals. The topics that are commonly studied are specific nutrient needs, energy expenditure, hydration, fuel substrate metabolism, ergogenic aids and weight issues for exercising individuals and athletes.

The program also has topics like personal training programs specially designed for the individual client. The focus is on the clients’ workout and how to enhance the physical program and to provide the best nutrition plan. The aim is to tailor the program to the specific needs of their body. The program should include proper nutrition, the necessary supplements and beneficial vitamins and minerals.

The curriculum has a lot to offer. Most institutes have similar courses on a college level that don’t only educate on sport nutrition but much wider than that. The program consist of courses like basic sports science, sport psychology, human physiology, data analysis, functional anatomy, exercise physiology, nutritional physiology and biochemistry, human nutrition, research methods, biomechanics and much more.

The students of sports nutrition education learn the following:

- How nutrients are taken in and how foods are digested and metabolized to provide necessary energy to fuel muscular activity.
- Dietary patterns that maximize performance and prevent disease.
- Research advancements in ergogenic aids.
- Supplementation and the pros and cons of popular diet techniques.
- Sample eating plans showing how to fuel for specific workouts.
- How to distinguish among food, diet, and supplement options and understand which are best and why.
- How to overcome food and weight obsessions.
- How to lose undesired body fat while maintaining energy for exercise.
- Strategies to boost energy, reduce stress, control weight, improve health and enhance workouts.

When you graduate from this study you will be able to get a job in the sports industry. The graduate can target various industries for employment. The following can be targeted: local or state government agencies, hospitals, rehabilitation clinics, institutes of sports, universities and colleges and also personal training. There a many options available to the graduate.

Studying sports nutrition is good investment and will give the graduate more than enough chances to work in this wonderful industry. Even so, many students continue onto a PGCE or Masters course in a related area.

Bryan Wong is the owner of the nutrition website
www.GetEasyInfo.com/nutrition > - A great website that shares quality Info, News and TIPS on Nutrition. Get Free good food for athletes recipes at => http://www.GetEasyInfo.com/nutrition

Resumes that get results have one thing in common - they answer the employer’s key question: what’s in it for me?

Think about the manager who opens your email and starts to read your resume. In all likelihood, she is overworked and understaffed. She’s probably working to tight deadlines and she desperately wants to hire that extra person to make her life easier. So when she looks at your resume, she wants to know one thing: how you will make her life easier? Yet 95% of the resumes she receives won’t answer that question.

If your resume quickly and clearly conveys your value, it will generate interviews. It really is that simple.

To check how well you’re doing, rate your resume against the following five criteria.

1. Does your resume have a clear focus? If you have more than one type of experience (say retail management and human resources administration) don’t use one resume for all situations. Instead, create two resumes - one that shows your abilities as a store manager and one that conveys your HR expertise.

2. Do you start with a summary? Don’t begin your resume with an objective statement that describes your desires and career goals. Instead create a powerful summary that shows how you will add value to potential employers. The key is to demonstrate to the reader that there is a clear fit between your skills and their needs. (If you don’t know what skills are important for your target positions, you need to do some research. Look at job descriptions and at job postings for similar positions and make a note of the common requirements.)

3. Do you stress your achievements? You must present evidence that you add value. Too many resumes focus on job responsibilities, but describing achievements shows the impact you actually made. Achievements are a powerful way to show your ability to make a difference. If you outline how you have made improvements, solved problems, generated revenue, saved money or done innovative work in the past, people will want to meet you.

4. Do you quantify your accomplishments? Try to convey your experience to someone who doesn’t know anything about you. Quantifying your achievements helps readers understand your background. For example, an administrative assistant may write that she: “centralized the purchasing of office supplies, saving $50,000 per year.” A sales manager might emphasize having “increased hardware sales by 35% within 6 months.”

5. Do you provide context? In order to really appreciate your achievements, the reader needs context. By being specific, you can help him understand the value of hiring you. An easy way to include this information is to describe each position you have held and include information about the situation in which you found yourself. For example, notice how the following job description provides context and allows the reader to imagine how this assistant might contribute in any office setting:

XYZ ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON DC
Office Manager
Recruited to organize busy office of Washington non-profit organization. Established office procedures, organized 10 volunteers and implemented filing and storage systems to gain control of three-year backlog of disorganized information.

* Cleared 226 cartons of policy statements, memos and briefings within 3 months.

An effective resume presents a vivid picture for potential employers. If your resume has a clear focus, starts with a powerful summary, expresses and quantifies accomplishments, and provides context, your value will be clear to potential employers and they won’t have to ask: what’s in it for me?

Louise Fletcher is President of Blue Sky Resumes and founder of the Career Hub blog. This article is an excerpt from Louise’s free eBook, “The Insider’s Guide to Job Search.” Download your copy now

Business coaching is necessary for surpassing the current levels of performance and productivity. The challenges faced by todays organizations in terms of reinvention, reengineering, reorganizing and right sizing has forced them to utilize business coaching in order to compete in the current market environment. For the proper growth of any organization, it is necessary to have executives who are up-to-date with the recent trends and have beliefs, values, attitudes, motivation and thoughts that will drive them to excel. Business coaching provides the perfect platform for developing personal skills and behaviors that are necessary for implementing organizational changes and initiating the learning process.

Business coaching is required both at the executive and the managerial level for understanding the organizations current position and to decide its future growth patterns. Apart from effecting educational development and experience, coaching also provides objective feedback and acts as a critical tool for successfully engineering organizational change. For adapting to the rapidly shifting marketplace, organizations need to change their approach. However, this is often difficult to implement as people and organizations are naturally resistant to change. Business coaching has become a very effective tool for initiating productive changes in individuals, teams, and systems by enabling leaders, managers, and employees to uncover potential that might otherwise go untapped.

With the growing realization that profits, productivity, and customer satisfaction are the outcomes of performance rather than the cause, business coaching courses have started focusing more on leadership issues, cultural factors and the learning and development practices that drive performance. The goal of business coaching is not to be an alternative vehicle of managerial control, but rather it concentrates on empowering and delegating to create a culture of responsibility and self-generated, commitment-based actions. Coaching is certainly more than just a technique as it involves viewing the organization in a different perspective and working through relationships, dialogues and feedback for harnessing future potential and growth. It provides organizations with the capability of altering or shifting current work methods, internal and external communications and the framework within which employees normally operate. Business coaching has thus become very critical for modifying or creating an effective work environment that is more adaptable to change and growth.

Business coaching allows managers to play the role of professional business coaches for meeting organizational challenges and motivating others in their work environment. It creates the awareness among managers that by acting as coaches they can transform or create an organizational culture that is more receptive to change and open to new possibilities. Managers as coaches learn to increase self-awareness decide when and how to take action, find creative solutions, consider opinions and feedback from fellow employees, set targets, make appropriate requests, decrease hostility, and reduce stress and negative emotions in the workplace.

Coaching managers provide many direct benefits to the organization as managers get a clear idea about their commitments as well as those of the organization. They learn how to generate and maintain effective relationships, which in turn increases the levels of trust and accountability in the organization. Their understanding of organizational and interpersonal dynamics is increased considerably, allowing them to empower themselves and others to achieve organizational objectives. They learn how to take calculated risks for producing results aligned with organizational vision. They also learn to develop the right kind of unity and team spirit that will powerful work relationships that help achieve extraordinary results.

Are You Ready To Exceed Your Potential? Contact http://www.businesscoach.com to find out how. You can have an expert Business Coach totally dedicated to your success. info@businesscoach.com. 1.866.354.7766

These days, when it comes to seeking out information, most people turn to their computers to do the work for them. “Surfing the Net” has become a routine way of gathering necessary data, facts, and other such knowledge. Need directions to your Aunt Susie’s friend’s garage sale? Head to mapquest.com and you’re likely to find a customized map, tailored to your specifications. Can’t remember what macerate means? Dictionary.com will remind you. In fact, these days, people use the Internet to search for answers to nearly any and every imaginable query, including information on business competition.

But how sure are you that the information you are obtaining via the World Wide Web is as accurate as it could be? What exactly do you sacrifice in the name of convenience? I, for example, have been steered astray on more than one occasion by the almighty Map Quest. And, although Dictionary.com is helpful, it certainly isn’t able to replace the vast resources available at your local library. Speaking of local libraries, even they have taken content online. AccessMyLibrary (www.AccessMyLibrary.com) is a site from Thomson Gale featuring free access to over 15 million articles from leading as well as trade/interest specific publications and journals.

Powerful and accurate online resources do exist, though they are often buried beneath a virtual layer of illegitimate websites and flashing advertisements informing you that you are, in fact, the winner of a new pink Motorola RAZR phone. Lucky you.

However, if you are searching for information on your company’s competitors, chances are you’d like that information to be as accurate and as easy to obtain as possible, a feat that is likely far more difficult than it should be. However, sites like ECNext’s Goliath (www.goliath.ecnext.com) simplify this task by providing you with clear, accurate company profiles, industry information and market reports as well as business news, resources, leads and more. Essentially, the site does your homework for you.

I probably don’t need to remind you that this sort of information can be imperative to the success of your business. According to Steve Strauss, Business Expert for Microsoft Small Business Center, “if you want to succeed in business, doing your homework is critical. Knowing what the competition does right (and wrong), what they charge for their products or services, and where they seem to be headed can give your business a significant boost.”

Dawn Rosenberg McKay, writer for Career Planning at about.com, agrees: “It’s important to keep up with business news about the industry in which you’re working or are considering working. It’s good business practice to be well informed about your clients’ industries as well. It will help you stay ahead of the competition.”

The accuracy and depth of this information is often the key to a successful business. Being aware of your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses is an invaluable learning tool. In the opinion of Warren Struhl, writer for Inc.com, “the more information you have, the better position you will be in to propel your business forward. So don’t become the entrepreneur that says, ‘If I only knew that before I started.’ Stay informed and you’ll be building a platform for success.”

Essentially, using the Internet to gain pertinent information can be an effective process, but it can just as easily yield inaccurate and out-of-date information. Valuable corporate information is out there and ripe for the picking. You just have to know where to look.

Sources:

Rosenberg McKay, Dawn. Keeping up with Business News is Good for Your Career. 29 August 2006. From: careerplanning.about.com/od/companyresearch/a/business_news.htm

Strauss, Steve. Ask the Expert. 29 August 2006. From: microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/expert/strauss120105.mspx

Struhl, Warren. Doing Your Homework. 30 August 2006. From: inc.com/resources/startup/articles/20050701/homework.html

Laura Watkins is a contributing business writer for www.goliath.ecnext.com. Goliath is one of the Internet’s largest collections of business research, news and information.

You’ve probably read numerous job interview tips which list the ways to respond to difficult interview questions: Tell me about yourself; What are your work-related weaknesses? Why are you leaving your current employer? These are the usual dreaded questions that we all expect to hear from interviewers. Typically interviewees are advised to create well-prepared and rehearsed scripts to respond to these dreaded questions. And so, during the course of the interview, interviewees sit on the edge of their seats waiting to respond, trying to remember the correct answers. And consequently, the interview becomes a race, a highly tense setting designed to stay one step ahead of the other with scripted conversation, pre-planned positioning, and second-guessing. Within this scenario, the possibility of effectively assessing the position and being able to evaluate how you might fit within the company is minimized.

Ideally, the interviewer and the interviewee should operate within certain mutual goals. To effectively hire someone, the interviewer needs to use questions that lead to meaningful responses and provide a clear picture of the candidate. At a minimum, the interviewer is looking for information regarding work assignments you’ve handled, the specific steps undertaken to achieve results, and the direct results accomplished.

As an interviewee, you have to be able to deliver this information….no matter the question. Additionally, as an interviewee, the only way you’ll be able to respond with full confidence (without referring to a script) is by ensuring that you’ve done your homework. To confidently manage the interview, it’s important to know where you’re heading - - to know your vision.

A well organized search for new career opportunities requires a comprehensive strategy. Most importantly, your search should flow directly from your own Career Vision. The vision of where you see yourself in the long term. Considering all the changes in the workplace, it’s easy to lose sight of your vision, of where you’re heading. You may have to change the path you’re following; however, it’s even more important never to let go of your fundamental plan or vision. Every step you undertake to find the new job, the new career opportunity, or the promotion should be based on your Career Vision.

A number of years ago, I recall interviewing a highly qualified candidate for a management position. He had begun his career in sales at an excellent company and had attained a MBA. Initially, I had resisted arranging an interview with this candidate because he was definitely overly qualified for the position. However, my director wanted to bring him in, and so we moved forward with the interview.

Apparently, this young candidate had hit a career snag and was aimlessly submitting his resume to classified ads, job boards, associates, etc., with the hope of landing a decent position. He was well prepared; however, I could see the wear and tear of his job campaign as we dug deeper into his resume and his goals.

During the interview, he worked tirelessly to present himself as the ideally qualified candidate for the position. He provided all the right answers (the ones everyone has been coached to say) and discussed the specific results his career had produced. He had read our company’s job description, reviewed our mission statement, and was prepared to discuss it with me. However, he could not provide information regarding his own career vision or goals. He merely repeated the same stuff I’ve read in numerous “how-to” manuals and books about interviewing. When I asked him about his long term plans, he replied, “I would like to be in a position to fully and successfully contribute to your company.” Nice response - - but what did that mean?

In the end, we extended an offer to another candidate who had presented himself as eager to connect with our clients and ready to discuss solutions for our company’s needs. His credentials were not as strong as the supposedly “ideal candidate,” however, we could envision how he would fit within our organization and our company culture.

If you create and maintain a path towards your own Career Vision, you will be able to answer those dreaded interview questions without feeling nervous. You”ll begin to realize that the interview is not the most important tactic - - it’s only one step within a bigger picture. It’s your vision that’s essential, not a well-prepared and rehearsed script based on someone else’s words. Successful interviews happen when you’re able to effectively convey your vision, your passion, and the work-related results of your own efforts.

After 17 years of management, I decided follow a new pathway to reach my Career Vision and launched Beacon Career Management. Check out the complimentary BCM Career Management Guide
to receive job interview tips & post your resume. Special limited offer to subscribers: Receive a free resume & job strategy evaluation.

If you’ve been laid off or have somehow lost your job, you might find your self in the uncomfortable position of having your job be to find yourself another job. Unless you have gobs of money saved up, you’ll have to hit the streets looking for a replacement that’ll give you the weekly paycheck.

Many people are unprepared for looking for a full-time job under this type of pressure. Here’s some tips that help you land a better job in no time.

Pen A Perfect Resume

Your resume is the first impression that prospective employers will have of you. Therefore, you want to really stand out from the crowd. The best way to do this, is to cater your resume to the job you are applying for. You want to highlight the skill you have that match the skills they need and remember to always be truthful.

Keep your resume short, with bullet items that highlight the important parts. You don’t need to elaborate with a huge novel about what you’ve accomplished - that’s what the interview is for, however, you do need to pique their interest enough for them to call you in for an interview.

Always include a cover letter with a short paragraph on why you are interested in their particular company or industry and how you think your skills will fit the job.

Submit Your Resume

Now that you have your resume written, you need to find places to submit it to. You could always go through a recruiter who has a list of jobs in your field open and can match you to them. You could also try using contacts you have in the business - call all your old friends and coworkers to try to ferret out any openings and companies who might be interested in working for. Finally you can check the papers and online job search websites.

Impress Them In The Interview

When you do get an Interview, you want to be sure to impress them with your skills and knowledge of the job. Don’t go overboard and be both full, and always be truthful. do some research on the companyy so that you can ask pertinent questions. If there Is some skills they you might be rusty and that the job calls for, do some homework so that you can talk about them intelligently.

Always show up for interviews on time, take traffic into consideration and make sure you get there to check in about five minutes ahead of time. Don’t forget to dress appropriately, while this may seem silly it actually does go a long way to making a big impression. Don’t be nervous! This is your chance to shine, remember that a lot of times the interviewer can be just as nervous or even more as an interviewee. Many people who are interviewing are just simply workers who lack interviewing skills, you can go a long way towards gaining their trust by being confident and easy to interview.

Follow Up

After the interview, don’t forget to follow up with a brief thank you letter. in a letter thank them for their time and also state how your skills are a perfect match for the job and in your particular interests in that area. People want to hire someone who is a good match for the job and will stay and enjoy it, and not just someone who needs a paycheck.

Sending a thank you letter may seem a bit old-fashioned, but this will help to get your name in front of the hiring managers again. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t do this and it really makes an impression when someone does.

Stick To A Schedule

Obviously, the more places you interview the better your chances of landing a job. You can’t just interview one place and then sit back for two weeks waiting to hear from them. Therefore, you need to set up some sort of schedule or goal for yourself. Perhaps you want to make sure you get In five interviews a week, then set this goal and make sure you work towards it.

While finding a new job can be a bit scary and often tedious you need to treat it as if it is your job and work at it full-time. If you make a great effort to find another job you’ll be back in the workforce in no time.

Lee Dobbins writes for http://jobhunting.subjectmonster.com where you can learn more about techniques used in searching for a job.