1.1 Finding the right information
Banjar’s primary motivation for learning more about digital skills is to help him pursue a career in marketing for the football sport industry. He knows that as well as looking for job opportunities, he also needs to understand exactly what the job entails and find out what skills he will need.
Much of the information he needs can be found online; however, finding it can take time. Developing his skills in finding information, such as those listed below, will result in being able to search far more effectively.
- Keywords: using focused words and phrases for his search.
- Filtering his results by location.
- Filtering his results by time.
With so much information available online it is also important to know which sites are the most trustworthy. The most reliable websites will be those belonging to:
- reputable organisations/companies/industries
- government departments
- training and skills organisations
- industry specialists or experts.
A great deal of information can also come from connecting with people online and hearing about their own experiences and advice. Banjar could benefit from a more human angle but would need to be aware that these will be opinions, rather than fact.
In the following activities you are asked to offer Banjar some guidance on searching for reliable careers information online.
Activity 1 Choosing the right keywords and phrases
Banjar is about to start some online research into football careers. He’s particularly interested in marketing and needs to work in the UK. How would you to advise him on:
- the most useful search terms he might use
- how he can limit his search?
You might find it useful to jot down a few notes in the box below.
Discussion
You may have mentioned some of the following search terms:
- marketing
- ‘Football”
- ‘soccer sports’
- careers.
You might have included ‘jobs’ in the search terms. This is likely to generate job opportunities, rather than advice on careers.
Banjar could use an advanced search to limit his search to:
- a particular time period – he would want to find recent information so could limit results to the past six months or year
- a particular location – he could limit the search to Myanmar websites or particular country websites
Activity 2 Knowing what information to trust
Banjar has found some websites that he thinks might help:
- Autosport forum – http://forums.autosport.com/ topic/ 192442-one-does-not-simply-get-a-job-in-f1/ [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]
- What do I need for a career in Football? – https://www.careersinfootball.com/
- Football Marketing Magazine – https://www.footballmarketingmagazine.com/
Have a look at each of the sites and offer some advice on:
- what type of information each site offers
- how trustworthy that information is
- how helpful the information is to Banjar in researching careers.
You might find it useful to jot down a few notes.
Discussion
The three websites all offer different types of information and vary in relation to how trustworthy they are:
Soccer forum
https://www.bigsoccer.com/ forums/
There might be some useful information here, but Banjar needs to remember that this is a forum and contains opinion, rather than fact. Some of the information might not be as trustworthy as it could be, as we don’t know how much experience the people in the forum have. The site is also over a year old and things might have changed since the comments were posted.
What do I need for a career in football? – https://www.careersinfootball.com/
This website provides comprehensive information on careers in the soccer industry. This is a reliable source of information and would help Banjar to focus on what he needs to do in order to pursue a career in the sector. It provides helpful guidance and links to relevant websites.
https://www.footballmarketingmagazine.com/
This is a football marketing magazine site, so will provide lots of topical news and discussion features. It will give Banjar a much more in depth understanding of football marketing which is likely to be reliable as well as providing excellent insight into what issues to mention in an application and at interview. It would also be a good source to quote to demonstrate that he has carried out thorough research.
Case study 1 – Banjar