Ah yeah I’m a swimmer, although I stoped competitive swimming bout 2 years ago, I just train now. Most of the fellow older swimmers I trained with went on to working as lifeguards while studying as uni as well, so just sorta following them..
Some tips would be great, thanks.
Lifeguarding is a really good job especially if you will be going away to uni, the Y are especially good at accommodating peoples availability which is such a big perk especially if you are used to kinda shitty fast food chains where they dont really care.
You will need to do your 'Pool Lifeguard Skillset', which teaches you the skills you need to perform a rescue HOWEVER this course generally doesnt run through scenarios to any extent so think of it as your toolbox and when there is a rescue you use the tools most suited to the situation to perform the rescue. Its all pretty straight forward, you learn to administer oxygen, use spinal equipment, and tow people. There is also a 200m swim in under 6 minutes but given you use to swim competitively you should be able to do that super easy. the legal side of it puts some people off but if someone drowns you have to go to the coroner's court and they decide whether you were negligent and caused the death through that. I haven't had any experience with privately-owned facilities but the YMCA is extremely flexible in like every aspect - you don't have to have 'amazing' availabilites to get a job, you can transer super easily, and internal recruitment is chill; my centre advertised for swim teaching I told the swimming teacher coordinator and shes said awesome go do your course asap and we'll start you doing some shadowing, i did that got accredited signed my letter of offer and i was a swim teacher, same thing with customer service i was like hey can i learn customer service and the frontline leader was like Ummm yes! and i got a shadow shift the next day and at the end of my shadow i received my letter of offer (this was like 5 days ago) and Im already rostered on for a heap of customer service shifts!
I think you've got the point, its flexible as all hell, and hence why its an appealing job for uni students especially when your base rate (as a casual) is $28 an hour.
Swim teaching you need to do you AUSTSWIM Teacher of swimming and water safety and you can't get accredited till you've been signed off as a competent teacher (kinda like your L's but the hours isnt set) this job is a lot more regular tho, so you need to be prepared to basically work a particular day/s every week like forever, obvs you can change your days to an extent but its not as flexible
If you want I can email you some of the swim teacher pre & post-course resources i have