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National Careers Service

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Woman sat at a laptop and wearing a headset in an office.
Woman sat at a laptop and wearing a headset in an office.

Welcome to the National Careers Service

We provide careers information, advice and guidance. We can help you make decisions at all stages in your career.

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Meet leisure centre manager Abby

Find out what Abby does as day-to-day as a leisure centre manager.

1 minute 30 second watch

View transcript

My name is Abby. I'm a duty manager at Burnholme sports centre and Yearsley swimming pool.

So I started off at Yearsley 10 years ago as like a teaching assistant. Then became sort of a level 2 swim teacher so I took my own classes and then got my lifeguarding so was like casual lifeguarding as well. And I worked all the way through like university, and college and stuff, doing like lifeguarding and swim teaching with GLL.

And then after Covid, I became full-time RA, so recreation assistant at Yearsley. And then sort of became senior rec assistant and then became casual duty manager and then duty manager full-time.

So if I'm on shift as a duty manager, like obviously opening and closing, depending on what shift I'm doing. All the checks, pool tests if I’m at the pool. Meter readings on the morning, then checking the inboxes, dealing with customers. Nothing's the same, there’s always something going on. And then I also like, do a lot of the organising and scanning and admin and all that sort of stuff as well.

Do a lot of, like, online training and like CPDs and all that sort of stuff. It was a level 3 duty manager apprenticeship. For me it was a big help because I could sort of reconsolidate all my learning that I did and like especially the financial side of, that wasn't my strongest. So to me, like learning about it as well through that really helped me.

Given me a lot more confidence about different skills and I can feel like I can deal with a lot more problems.

Discover careers in sport

Explore the variety of career opportunities in sport, from sports science to kit design.

Speak to an adviser

Wherever you are with your decisions, you can contact us to get advice from a careers adviser.
Call 0800 100 900 or use webchat to talk online.