West Ham United-supporting Olympic Gold medal-winning rower Mark Hunter MBE is fronting a new Foundation video series aimed at helping people gain employment.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the employment environment becoming an increasingly turbulent one.
With that in mind, the Foundation is marking Employability Awareness Day today by sharing an array of resources and opportunities for people to utilise, whatever their situation.
Among them is the launch of a new Foundation video series entitled ‘The Training Ground: Careers Insight & Guidance’.
The series consists of short interviews with industry professionals, providing an insight into experiences and employability support and strategies useful during the pandemic and beyond.
Themes covered include:
- How to navigate a career change
- Dealing with setbacks
- Interview Success
- Public Speaking and Presentation skills
- Goal setting and motivation
- Getting noticed: Enhancing your CV
Hunter, who is from east London and a lifelong Hammers supporter as well as an Ambassador for the West Ham United Foundation, explained what it meant to him to take part in the London 2012 Olympics and shared his experience navigating a career change from being a full-time Athlete, to Coach, back to being a full-time Athlete, then retiring for a second time to then become a Project Manager, now onto his current position as interim CEO at London Youth Rowing.
On his role as a Coach at UCLA following his first retirement from professional sport, Hunter said: “I remember doing my research and I picked up on that John Wooden, a basketball coach in America College Sport, was a huge iconic figure and he was at UCLA.
“That was his background, he’d won numerous titles and I used one of his quotes during my interview and apparently that was the deciding factor as soon as I said that quote that was the thing, because I wasn’t an Olympic Champion at that point, I hadn’t won the Olympics.
“My Olympic record was: I came last in Athens, I hadn’t won any big medals, and it was just that bit of research and insight was really valuable and obviously was the thing that got me the role.
“It was quite humbling to know that that research had been useful because sometimes you’re never sure whether the kind of background stuff that you do actually does impact or influence but in most cases it does.”
Each episode will be delivered fortnightly on the Foundation’s YouTube channel, with episode one available now.