PitchVision runs a lot of jobs for cricket coaches for clubs, schools and other organisations. How do you ensure you get the role?

Every cricket coaching job will have it’s unique differences, but there are some things that are common. If you get these “big rocks” right from the start, you can focus on showing how you fit to any coaching role.

Let’s look at the details.

Qualifications

These days, you can’t get far in coaching without a qualification. If you want a job, get the paper.

Different countries have different systems, but most places in the world view English (ECB) or Australian (CA) as the premier certificates. These both have various levels of qualification.

To coach professionally, most jobs require a minimum of ECB or CA Level 2. Some even look for level 3 as a minimum.

So, get that badge.

It can be hard, time consuming and expensive. You even might come away thinking you didn’t learn much (although most people learn a lot). Yet, whatever you learn, getting the qualification will give you the right to say you have achieved a measurable standard as a coach.

It gets you in the door.

Experience

Of course, coaching qualifications are just the start. To get a coaching job you need to be an experienced coach.

Some coaching roles also require you to be a very good player. Perhaps even first-class standard. These dual role positions are common in UK club cricket. You can’t fake that, so only go for these jobs if you are genuinely able to perform at the expected level.

For jobs that are just coaching with no playing required, you still need to put some work in to build experience.

This might mean starting at the bottom if you have no coaching chops to show.

Volunteer coach at your local school or club. There will be plenty of chances for you to coach young cricketers if you offer your services for nothing. Even if your ultimate aim is to coach in the IPL, you can still start helping 10 year olds to play straight and build from that small start.

You could even treat coaching as a business itself: run cricket-themed birthday parties. Do corporate days. Advertise one-to-one sessions locally. Get whatever experience you can. There are no big organisations that control all the cricket jobs so you have freedom to be freelance, creative and in control of your fate.

The more you coach, the better you get and the more people will trust you with higher level players. It takes time. Perhaps years. You’ll get there.

Informal development

While you are building experience, you can also keep learning.

Formal qualifications give you a grounding, but they are foundations. You need to build on them. So, read websites like PitchVision, get videos and eBooks, ask to sit in on coaching sessions with coaches you admire. Listen to podcasts.

These things are informal but will allow you to learn long after you have been in the classroom getting your badges. That means when you go to an interview for a coaching job you can talk about far more than the basics.

The more you take control of your fate as a coach, the more chance you give yourself of success.

So build a powerful formal and informal CV and get reading the jobs section here.