Leaving school and entering the workforce can be both exciting and daunting. A world of possibilities await for study, work, travel and life!
If you are interested in swimming, aquatics, sport or recreation, the aquatic industry can offer a number of career pathways for school leavers. From becoming a lifeguard to teaching people how to swim to working behind the scenes in a leisure centre, there are a range of flexible and rewarding job opportunities that will allow you to learn many transferable skills and perhaps even allow you to continue your studies at the same time.
Aquatic facilities are often large, multifaceted organisations that run by local councils or management agencies. As well as jobs involving being on pool deck or in the water, they have a range of customer and community facing positions and also more office-based roles. For example, there may be opportunities at assistant, officer or coordinator level in areas such as community activities and programs, community liaison, customer service, facility/equipment, marketing, and office and course administration, all of which will allow you to broaden your skills and knowledge to find out what really suits you.
Top 3 tips for school leavers
- Don’t expect to know everything and have all the answers about your future
- Don’t expect to get everything right
- There is great value in being exposed to a range of experiences and in learning from what may feel like mistakes
When it comes to starting a career, or even just finding your first job, try to work out what you are interested in, what you like doing, what feels right and go from there. Also, consider what you are good at and where your natural abilities lie. This will help to hone your thoughts and personal ambitions, but remember if you are not entirely sure what is right for you at this early stage, that is okay (see tip 3 above!).
What you need to know
Working in the aquatic industry means working with people and the public. This means you will need to learn about providing good customer service to a range of people from different walks of life and backgrounds, and all of the jobs come with considerable responsibility. For example, if you become a lifeguard, you may one day have to put your first aid and resuscitation skills into action to save somebody's life.
Depending on location, jobs within the aquatic industry can be seasonal. So it is worth knowing that spring and the start of summer are always the best times to look for jobs in the aquatic industry.
Job opportunities
Generally, most people first enter the aquatic industry as a lifeguard or swimming and water safety teacher, which provide relatively good rates of pay for entry level positions.
Both roles can quickly lead to coordinator and team-leader type positions, and eventually even management level positions such as swim school manager or lifeguard duty manager. In addition, there are other more technical roles, such as aquatic technical operator, which chiefly involves managing the water quality and pool plant equipment at an aquatic facility.
Qualifications
Depending on the role you are interested in, you will need to obtain appropriate qualifications to work in the aquatic industry. This means doing a vocational education and training (VET) course, which will give you nationally recognised qualifications that allow you to work anywhere in Australia.
Most of these courses are relatively short in duration and not too expensive to undertake.
If your focus is on being in the water or on the pool deck, the following courses, which involve some pre-course e-learning and two days of face-to-face training, can be a good starting point:
If you are interested in the aquatics industry more broadly, you might like to do a course that will give you one of the following qualifications:
