Basketball Player Sample

Most basketball players rely on a portfolio to showcase skills, achievements, and experience. Those portfolios include everything from your name, contact info, height, weight, and stats to the teams you’ve played for and any specialized skills you have. While that’s all well and good, you should also have a resume to boost your portfolio. 

Even though being a basketball star isn’t a traditional job, your Basketball Player resume can serve to complement your portfolio much the same way that corporate professionals use a biography or LinkedIn profile to balance out their applications. 

In this guide, you’ll learn how to write a succinct Basketball Player resume that will be a slam dunk for how you present yourself professionally – showcasing your skills and presenting yourself as a well-rounded athlete. We’ll offer a bunch of tips and tricks and even a Basketball Player resume sample that you can use as inspiration. 

How to write a resume

You want to be able to capture the attention of recruiters and coaches, so the format and structure of your Basketball Player resume is critical. You’ll want to use the reverse-chronological format as it will allow you to lay out your athletic background in a logical way that makes sense to people reading it. 

Your reverse-chronological Basketball Player resume has the following layout – you could even consider this an outline for your resume:

Contact information first

The first thing on the page will be your name, contact information, and other personal details you know a coach will need to know – height, weight, playing position, and date of birth. If you have any social media profiles that highlight your talents, link them here, as well. Be sure there’s nothing untoward on your social media before you link it, though. 

Title and profile paragraph next

The top 25% of your resume will be dedicated to telling future employers what you want to do next and how your career history backs up your desires. 

The title goes on a line by itself and points to the position you want. You can do what you see in the Basketball Player resume below and simply put “Basketball Player,” or you can elevate it by writing something like “Basketball Player: Elevating the Game through Dynamic Performance and a Passion for Victory.” The latter turns a title into a headline, and headlines grab attention. 

The profile paragraph is a three to five-sentence snapshot of how your career is leading you to the new team. Talk about achievements, how much experience you have, and how well you can get along with others. 

Core competencies – e.g., skills

After you craft your profile paragraph, you want to spend a bit of time on your skills list. This isn’t a dumping ground for everything you know how to do on and off the court. It’s a concise list that highlights the main skills coaches are going to be interested in for their team. And, as you are aware, all coaches want something different, depending on what the team needs. 

Research the team a bit to find out what they’re lacking, and then emphasize the skills you have that will help them get over any hurdles they’re experiencing. These skills can include things like shooting accuracy, defensive abilities, and passing capabilities. 

Your experience is the bulk of your Basketball Player resume

Of course, you have to tell future coaches about past positions. This is where your “Professional Experience” comes into play. In the same way someone writing a corporate resume would focus on career achievements, that’s what you must do as well. 

Use reverse-chronological order – start with your most recent position and work backward – to list the last 10 years of experience. List the name of the team you played for, what your position was, the dates that you were with them, and the achievements you had. Work in detail about training regiments and emphasize any special efforts you take to improve your game. 

Education and professional development

Coaches are going to want to know if you’ve completed any degree programs or finished professional development-type training classes. Here’s where you list those. Include the program you participated in – whether it was a degree program or a series of classes, where you attended the program, and the date you graduated. 

Finish your Basketball Player resume with ‘Awards’

The education section is where most professional resumes stop – though not all. But your Basketball Player resume should include an ‘Awards’ section so that you can list any notable achievements like MVP awards, championships, and other recognition. 

Basketball Player resume example 

We know that seeing is often believing, so to help put everything in that outline into better context, here is a Basketball Player resume example for you to look over.

You’ll notice that this sample resume contains a team position and a professional/in-office role, too. If your non-team positions relate to being a Basketball Player, then, by all means, include them on your resume. That will only help you stand out from the crowd. 

Key hard & soft skills for Basketball Player

One thing of critical importance is that your resume should contain a balanced mix of hard and soft skills. Hard skills are the technical abilities you have that allow you to play the game – shooting three-pointers. Soft skills are the interpersonal attributes you possess that let you work with others and solve problems. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the skills you list on your resume only have to display on-court expertise. If you’re like most basketball players, your profession has you doing things off-court as well, like media relations and networking.

Hard skills to consider:

• Ball handling

• Rebounding

• Fitness

• Body conditioning

• Public speaking

• Branding

• Marketing

• Social media management

Soft skills to consider:

• Communication

• Conflict resolution

• Leadership

• Teamwork

• Collaboration

• Adaptability

• Resilience

When you have a mix of both types of skills on your Basketball Player resume, coaches and recruiters are able to get a holistic view of what you bring to the table for their team. Let’s face it, that’s all they’re really concerned about – how your background, experience, and skills will benefit them. So, be sure you’re speaking their language. 

Summary & last words

The bottom line is that you should take the same care in writing your resume and career portfolio that the coaches take in planning out every shot, play, and inevitable victory. While your Basketball Player resume may be a single piece of your portfolio puzzle, it’s an important piece that complements your history and proves you have what it takes to be the next star player. 

Introduction to ZipJob: Professional resume writers

If writing your resume so that it reflects your passion for the game and your commitment to excellence overwhelms you, you can leave it to the professional resume writers at ZipJob. We’ve worked with hundreds of athletes to curate career marketing documents that win the day! You will be assigned a personal writer who will work with you one-on-one to find the most prominent and important details from your history to showcase on your resume.

Why you should make use of our resume writing services to land your next job as a Basketball Player

Remember, it’s not just about the numbers on the scoreboard. Yes, those are important, but your skills and career achievements – your professional narrative – need to shine through. Also, ZipJob understands that your athletic career extends beyond the court into things like community engagement events. Your professional narrative needs to include those moments, too, to prove that you have what it takes to be a well-rounded professional Basketball Player who will impress coaches.

Resume writing service for Basketball Player: Let us write your resume

When you choose the resume writing service that’s right for you, you’ll be paired with a writer who has the knowledge you need to craft a winning resume. Not only will you walk away with a stellar document, but your confidence will improve too. Nothing could be simpler when working through ZipJob’s process – choose your service, collaborate with your writer, go through revisions, and then you’re off to the games!