Skills for the industry

With so many varied roles available it can be difficult to choose the right career to suit you. Whatever career you decide to pursue, your employer will want to know you are set up for success. They won’t expect you to have all the necessary skills straight away, particularly if you’re just beginning your career, but regardless of your chosen path, completing BHS qualifications will provide you not only with equine skills, but also transferable skills such as adaptability, teamwork, organisation and other key skills along the way, preparing you for a future career in any industry.

Enthusiasm and motivation

An employer will want to see that you’re passionate about the job you’re applying for, that you’ll work hard, and are self-motivated and proactive.

Any qualifications you can achieve outside of school or college are a huge bonus to add to your CV. Gain BHS qualifications and you’ll show that you’re aware of current industry requirements and have the practical skills required for an equine career, along with universal life skills. Gaining BHS qualifications will also demonstrate your motivation and determination to prospective employers.

All of the skills listed here, plus many others such as commitment, reliability, teamwork and problem-solving skills can all be demonstrated through achieving BHS qualifications.

Organisation and self-management

A number of skills can be grouped under this topic but generally these include punctuality, your ability to manage your workload and prioritise, working well under pressure and time management skills. These skills are essential to employers as they demonstrate that you can take responsibility for your own work, be trusted and left unsupervised to complete tasks.

As our qualifications are vocational there’s an element of time management with all tasks asked of you on the day. You‘ll need to demonstrate that you can work through a series of tasks from a briefing given by an assessor. Gaining a qualification, particularly a timed practical assessment where you’re observed by an assessor, will demonstrate your ability to work under pressure.

Communication skills

There’s so much more to this than having a chat. You also need to prove how well you listen to others, put your ideas across, build a rapport and negotiate with people. Even if you choose to work primarily with animals, you must be able to communicate with other people and work well in a team.

Our BHS assessments are discussion based and will prove your ability to listen, question and discuss your answers with an assessor. BHS coaching qualifications that are Stage 2 or above will also demonstrate your ability to communicate with a group of people and be able to adapt your communication style depending on the age, learning styles and ability of different riders.

Resilience

This will demonstrate your ability to recover from setbacks. An employer will want to hire someone who can bounce back and can be flexible in their approach. Being able to take on board feedback and show your ability to improve, is important to employers.

As you know, horses are unpredictable animals, so you’ll have many examples of when things didn’t quite go to plan during your training or assessment. An employer won’t necessarily be interested in what exactly went wrong but they will want to know how you dealt with it; your attitude, what you learnt from the event and how you improved for next time.