Top 5 transferable skills

Time management Time management is a great skill I have, I study full time, coach two days a week, work in woodies 4 days a week and work in a bar one night a week. I am in college Monday – Wednesdays and Fridays, this takes up nearly all of the day. I have to make sure I prioritise study ahead of going out because if not ill have no time for that due to work commitments. I use lunch times to get assignments done in college which helps a lot, doing the work as you get it eases a lot of stress. Time management is all about reducing your stress load. I also work in woodies which means I have set hours which makes me be able to plan out my week, get into a routine which is a great help with college, on a Saturday night I work in a pub called the graduate, I do no more than five hours and this is for extra cash to pay for college. Coaching is also set hours a week and during mid terms and Christmas holidays I don’t coach so this helps take a bit of the work load off so I can relax. Having good time management will help me in the future if I am running or managing my own business, covering myself in work does put pressure on me but my good time management skills make it less stressful so this will help me in the future.

Teamwork and leadershipThroughout my time in secondary school I captained all the basketball teams from 1st to 6th year, this help me gain great confidence in myself, and how I can put confidence in others on the team. This leadership and team work ethic I had from coaching then led me to becoming the senior girls coach when I left the school, where we went on to win every game and the senior league. This shows my great leadership skills and team work. I now coach all the boys teams in newpark school, at a time I have at least 23 lads in a hall by myself so I need great leadership skills to handle them all and make them focus. I also have coached at dalkey united football club, I coached kids as young at 4 up to 13 so my leadership skills have to vary with the different age groups. I studied in DCFEI in 2013 and got a fetac level 5 in coaching so studying coaching basically was studying leadership, this is where I picked up all the vital information for leadership. Two summers ago I moved to Mallorca to work in a bar, this previous summer I managed the bar, this is completely different leadership skills I needed to have due to it being adults I was working with in an high alcohol environment. From my previous year in Mallorca the owners realised I had good leadership skills so this put me in charge of their bar, I had responsibly for the staff and people in the bar so I needed a lot of leadership skills.

NetworkingI have good networking skills, I have now worked in Mallorca over nine months in total and have come across hundreds of people, I have made contacts all over the world from Holland, spain, Scotland, England, Germany some of them, which is going to help me in the future with the clothing brand I am starting in spreading word of mouth for the brand. The last two summer I met a man who works in a business advisory company in ireland and have become good friends with him, this can only help me because I have someone to help me if I am stuck with my ideas. From working in a large pub for three years has also widened my networks in the south Dublin area this has helped me get more job opportunities which led to me getting a job in woodies. I have become active on social media with my clothing brand, using facebook, tsu, Instagram and twitter. This Is a great wayto network your brand and yourself online.

Interpersonal skillsI have great interpersonal skills, these derive from my work, coaching and volunteering. I have been a bar man for over three years now, you cannot survive in a bar environment without good interpersonal skills, being able to talk about nothing somebody for days on end to keep them happy and coming back to your establishment. Although in Mallorca it was a bar I was working in, it is a different type of environment to the bar one in Dublin I was used to, we needed to create memories for young people coming over on their 6th year holidays, we had to make everything dramatic and 100 times better than they actually were, in a sense kind of acting to make sure the customers were happy and that they would come back to our bar again, hopefully spending the whole summer in our bar. Volunteering and coaching in football also needed me to have great interpersonal skills, from coaching kids with special needs to little kids, I needed a wide range of interpersonal skills.

Adaptability and flexibility Two years ago I booked a one-way ticket to spain, a country where I didn’t have a word of the native language, just myself, clothes and bar skills with me. After one day I got a job, and ended up running the bar. This shows I have great adaptability to move to a foreign country, learn a bit of language. I then had to deal with the way of life, working every day, long hours, trying to find somewhere to live, and being away from family, these are all hard things as a 20-year-old to deal with but I dealt with them well. I would work at short notice if the bar got busy so I was very flexible in that regard. i am currently working and studying at the same time, along with coaching commitments I have a lot on my plate but still am available to work whenever needed.