Building your Diving Career. Or 6 key points to be a COOOOL diver with a Job

Well, I'm quite happy that people got quite "fusssssy" with my last blog about "|Free Courses...."| . I guess I could be wrong, and there is a lot of real good employer ready to give free internships.

So know about todays topic: Building your Diving Career.

In the world that we are living, competition is  a main factor in any industry. The Diving Industry is really competitive place. A lot of really good qualified people out there working hard to get that great jobs.

A few days ago, a diver sent me an email complaining why Dive Centers don't reply when they apply for a job. The reason is simple (and hold tied to your shair) every day, every ad in DiversJobs gets 500 people that make "click" and think of applying. The result a huge amount of emails that Dive Centers get everytime they post a job.

The consequences are quite obvious, only the best (in some cases) get that jobs.

In the huge jungle of jobseekers that apply for a job we have all kind of species.

a) The dreamer. - The dreamers are usually nice people (but still dreamers) with no diving idea, that just want to change their life and apply to a MSDT job or even better to a Course Director Job

b) The spammer - people that apply to ALL kind of jobs, sending usually their CV without any introduction

c) The Only-Manager - Usually Instructors burn-out that just want to set into managers of a Dive Center

d) The Rockefeller - I have seen people applying for jobs and requesting at least 3000 us dollars per month. Well... if work in the UK or in Australia , may you will get that (if you are lucky), but in many normal diving destinations, getting that sort of money is simply unrealistic.

So, what about the real candidates? The good guys, the people like you and me....

Well, in between normal people (and by saying normal, I'm talking about mentaly normal people) we have instructors with great experience, with amazing qualifications and with really fantastic CV's.

So, which kind of individuals get the jobs?

I can define a 6 key points that are important to mention:

1. Languages:  As an instructor you always want to reach and be able to teach the biggest amount of divers. At the end of the day, that is what your boss wants. So multilingual instructors are always wanted in Dive Centers.

But also remember: The key languages are the languages spoken in the diving industry. So, if you speak portuguese or Basque... well it really doesn't make a huge difference (unless you work in Brazil or the Basque Country....     )

2. Diving Certification: I know that here many of you are going to jump an scream at me... but if you really want to be able to work in any sort of dive center you need to be with PADI. Ok, scream at me, tell me about PADI ascent rate, bla, bla, bla... I know, I don't make comission by talking about PADI, but if you want to work and want to make money and want to get more chances of a job, you need to go PADI.

PADI + MICROSOFT + Coca Cola... if we could choose we will may be go with SSI + LINUX + Water...  but there are almays more jobs for PADI Instructors than for SSI instructors. *

* If you don't believe me, go now to www.diversjobs.com and search for SSI Term. How many jobs do you get??? Now search for PADI. You compare the results.

3. Be better. Teach more stuff.

So you can teach open water courses. Great! So the rest of the 5000 people applying for that job you want. What else do you have? Can you teach Nitrox? Can you teach any DAN course? Can you teach any Trimix? Study.. study ... study... get more and more certs and get more and more credentials... . 

If I need to hire a PADI OWSI or a PADI MSDT... I go for the MSDT. The reason? Easy, the MSDT can teach more courses than the OWSI. Simple thinking.

4. So you dive and...?

Diving usually is in the water. And the water industry is huge! Many companies also need people with more qualifications, like Skippers, Coxswain holders (in Australia), Master Class 5 and people with boat handling papers and certifications.

This are DIFFICULT courses to take and usually this sort of divers get a lot more job offers. If you can dive and also take your customers in the same boat... the Dive Center managers is saving money and you have a bigger % of keeping your job. Usually really important if you are working in Australia and the US. (Also key for big liveaboard companies).

5. Market yourself: You need to sell yourself, you need to have a teaching style... a marketing way of be able to become "different". How? That's the 1.000.000 dollars question. You can try to create your own diving specialty... or become an expert in one topic... . But do something different. Bringing something new into a dive center always helps.

6. Sales and money mind:

Dive Centers (almost 99% of them) are run by people that need to make a living from the business. So, is always important to get people with SALES spirit. I read a lots of complains of diving instructors and divemasters about... "I love to dive... but I hate to sale and do marketing..." Well, the best instructors in dive resorts are the instructors that manage to Con-Ed their students. Instructors that bring more income to the dive center. You must think: I didn't join this profession to do that. Well.... if you don't bring money to a dive center, sooner or later you will be walking out the door. Believe me...

Also I find that people that make a little bit of effort get a Job. Next time you find the Job you want, make a quick international call (don't be mean, if you really want  the job, spend that extra 5 dollars and pay for the phone call) and have a quick chat with the employer. Let them know you are a REAL candidate. Let them know how good you are.

Don't follow the crowds, try to be different......

Like a guy that I used to know that was scared of not getting a job, so we created one day a jobsite for divers, and he name it: DiversJobs.

11:46 PM - 10/27/2005 - post comment

Applying for vacancies - from a dive operator's perspective

This is an interesting posting but there's something even more basic for professional divers to consider when applying for a job.

We recently posted a vacancy on the PADI website and the diversjobs site. We had over 100 responses. Only about 5 of the applicants had:

a) bothered reading the requirements in the ad and written their application email accordingly. Most of them were just a general application with no 'tuning' to our requirements at all.

b) bothered visiting our website where they would have found out a little about our dive operation and tailored their application accordingly - even though the web address was included on the job vacancy posting

c) bothered to figure out who to address the email to instead of a general 'Dear Sir' or worse, nothing!

If you're REALLY looking for work, a dive operator will really, really appreciate someone taking the time to at least make it seem that they are interested in working for YOU rather than just anyone who'll give them a job. Trust me!

Anonymous - 4:46 AM - 4/8/2006

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