Today we're joined by Ross Burberry, head of development and performance at Derby County Football Club.

So tell us what is head of development and performance?

Yeah It's a fancy title, isn't it? I think it's one of those titles that is a bit all encompassing. So with regards to my role, it's overseeing performance and analysis provision at the club, It extends from first team into the academy, and then also across to the women's team as well. So very much a strategic role a cat, one football club a league one club that has got ambitions to go much higher and, as a result, a lot of responsibility that comes with it yeah, a lot of work to do.

So tell us a little bit about your journey and how you arrived at this kind of current position?

Yeah I played ice hockey as a kid did martial arts as a kid, i had a real affinity towards fitness? Always saw the value in conditioning. I've been a real key part in in me through ice hockey because I was never any good, So I had to try and do something to stay in the game. but what that led me through towards was back in the early 2000’s as to what can that look like in terms of a career, if you're not going to make it as an athlete? I did a H and D for those that I kind of probably don't remember a H and D, It's like a foundation degree. I did one of those in sport development and coaching, really kind of enlightened me as to what you could do within professional sport as a practitioner, which led me on to a sport science undergrad, and then got into Sheffield Wednesday's academy helping out within the evening programme. Looking at the FDPY DPH groups, how can we help them to become fitter, faster, stronger, utilising the FIFA 11 So again, show us how far back that goes and how far that extends in terms of intervention and athletic development. And then as things progressed, first team at Doncaster Rovers , looking at the fitness condition for them coming out of league one to the championship and kind of being a one man band there. And then the journey kind of started, really? From going from heart rate monitoring to GPS monitoring from S&C to really heavily reliant upon sport science subjectivity to objectivity and yeah, kind of ended up here through a few few years.

Could you look back and think of one kind of anything at one point that inspired you to follow this career to pursue it?

It was just a love for fitness, I worked for a short period of time over in the States in ice hockey, and that kind of opened my eyes a little bit as to what could working in ice hockey look like within North American sport that's where the kind of pinnacle of ice hockey is Really and playing the game at an English level, although not very high level, was something I really wanted to be. Where I wanted to go and trying to find ways of staying in sport was something that I had to do from being a player, because again, I wasn't very good. How how do I find ways to stay in the game as a player? Do things that other people can't or probably won't and that kind of said, Well, you can stay in the game you can't be a player, but you can be a staff member. What do I want that to look like as a as a coach? Because I helped out coaching with ice hockey as a fitness conditioning person or a sports scientist or an SNC and having that love for fitness and having that love for conditioning was the Yeah, these are the These are the routes I wanna take and probably still haven't worked out yet as to what route I am taking but it changes along the way, so yeah, that that was kind of the one for me. My ambition was to stay in sport for as long as I possibly could do whatever I could to stay in sport and the learning of how to do that was something that carried me forward.

So as head of kind of development and performance, what does a typical week look like for you a week?

The manager likes me to stay close to the players, that's something that he wants so from an applied perspective, I'm probably doing more than maybe what the job indicates. I don't mind that I love that aspect of it. I love working with players and probably would like to do more of it if I could, but the role is more of a strategic management position. So on a day to day, it's working out the tactical aspects of what the day requires, speaking with all the staff around what they think is appropriate for the players to do on that particular day, especially when it comes down to individuals trying to build up a sport programme for the individuals and then the strategic elements of the day to day speaking with companies, speaking with product providers where we're looking at analysis software or we're looking at GPS software or we're looking at other ways of monitoring and processing what we're doing with our players and picking up on and identifying the gaps and where we can be better, a lot of that does come down to people, but it also comes down to processes. So having that that mind of possibly curiosity, but also the strength of understanding, what does a strong culture look like within professional football and what are the elements that we need to do to be the best at it with where we're at?

So you always looking for the kind of the new technologies that could give you that extra kind of couple of couple of percent on the pitch?

I think keeping ahead of the game with what technologies are available is important but not becoming reliant upon those technologies it is a people first approach that that I always take, and the club takes too. The club is very much built on those values of. We look at people before processes, but, yeah, we do look at technologies we make sure that we understand what technologies can offer us and it is that way around It's making sure that we're not trying to do stuff for the sake of doing stuff It has to have importance, It has to have purpose, and we all have a natural curiosity towards where is technology going, whether it's through AI or virtual reality or other aspects. But equally, we have to make sure that it's built for purpose for what we require, as an original football club, and not just following trends that you know what the clubs might do? Well, if we were doing the same things as what everyone else was doing, we'll all be doing the same together and then we all just become average together. So we want to try and become the best that we can and I think the best that you can be is original to yourself, as a collective within the football club, not just as individuals about identifying group values, what those values mean to us what's important to us. What does the timeline of imprinting those values look like? It's something fast, It’s something slow? Someone once told me, working with people slow is fast and fast is slow, so identifying a proper cadence as to when we expect projects and people to align is important, and looking at how we're bringing in technologies has to fit within that otherwise, it takes a long time to build a culture but overnight to ruin it.

It's a good way of putting it. If we flip it now to staff recruitment. How do you ensure that your recruitment aligns with creating like a cohesive culture within the club? What are the factors that you're looking for?

The the easy ones to say, you know you can say the ISMs are everywhere, we want good people, we want to build relationships. You know these kind of analogies always pop up and not always come about, but there there's a lot of truth to that, I would personally and it's a big statement, but I would rather bring in an unqualified, very good person rather than a difficult person who is very well qualified. I think that the culture gives us an opportunity to become so much better as a sum of our parts as opposed to individuals and although professional standards and qualifications are extremely important, it can't be, and it's not always a this or the other, but it can't be a we need to go for the qualification as opposed to the correct person and bringing in the right people is imperative to our perform.

So how important is it for you to then maintain that balance between kind of like senior members of staff that have been in the industry for a few years and kind of the new staff that are coming through?

Yeah generational differences, societal differences, expectations, It's a dangerous word entitlement, and it's a dangerous word, but what we have to be aware of within an evolving organisation or any organisation for that matter, is that the people play a crucial part and we don't want to bring in all of the same because we're just going get like I said before, an average of everyone, and there's no real curiosity or innovation or productivity because nobody's challenging one another, we're all doing the same things, and we're all in agreeance, and there's a bit of a group think going off, but equally when we talk around diversity and that's something that we try and bring in or I try and bring in with in regards to recruitment, It's not necessarily a diverse person we're looking for, t's not a different age or a different ethnicity or a different education as such, it's more around diversity of thought and when we talk around diversity of thought, it is having the level of emotional intelligence to challenge other people for the betterment of the group, not necessarily to challenge someone to then show them that you're more intelligent than them or they're inadequate it's more around how can we get this group better, maybe challenge is the wrong word, because challenge insinuates almost a bit of confrontation or a bit of conflict but we do want to give people a little bit of a poke to go have you have you thought about this? And we talk around the multidisciplinary team so the multidisciplinary team is Everyone stays in your lane, Great No problem there there's a lot of clarity there there's a lot of understanding of what your roles and responsibilities are, but are we really getting the best out of one another by staying in your lane? We very much take an interdisciplinary approach, so we have the lanes, and if we're a car, we all stop at our separate lanes. We can change lanes, at times we can go and join someone else to go and help them or provide support and assistance. We see that quite a lot within medicine and performance. our performance guys assist medical on a day to day basis, they get involved with rehab, there's a talk around conditioning, there's a talk around how we're then making rehab purposeful to then go back into training in the same way that when we talk around analysis and medicine, we can look at mechanisms of injury we can anticipate what we're forecasting our own rehabilitation through video footage through some form of biomechanical analysis. So there's a lot of change where people can sit in different camps, but still remember what lane they're in, but that comes with communication, It comes with understanding, It comes with belief and trust and togetherness, all the words that you would associate with a real strong group.

Platforms like EdexPro , how are they going to complement or enhance your current recruitment strategies?

11:41So we had students that came through the other day from the recruitment through Edexpro for the performance vacancies for next year for our clinical gap years, and we were having a chat with students and we want the students that are going to be coming to us through EdExPro to showcase their personality, showcase their character. I've been considered pretty left field and lateral in my thinking at times, and maybe that gives us innovation, maybe gives us problems, but hopefully for the positive one. What we're trying to get through EdExPro is an understanding of the type of person that we're then going to be reviewing on their profile, i think CV’S can definitely do that, but to a limit, I think LinkedIn profiles and other social media platforms can do that to an extent, too. But what EdExpro can do is give us a real bespoke understanding of that person for this purpose of coming here, not as a generalism around what that person is. So when I spoke to the students, I said your videos were quite interesting, but you were sat at a desk, you had your airpods in, and I could see every now and then your eyes would deviate to the left because you were reading off a very scripted card. We want to see your personality. We want to see your character. If you're an avid runner or a cyclist, do your video whilst on a bike or out on a run, we can see you talking from the heart, unscripted in an environment that gives us an understanding that you're into exercise, you want keep yourself healthy and we can see the natural you from that, then we can see your profile, and understandably, if you're a student at undergrad level, your profile isn't probably going to differentiate you from others given the stage of career that you're in and the pathway that you're in, so you're all going to be on this undergraduate journey, what differentiates you from the next person or the next person and I think having a real sound understanding of someone's personality and character is what can definitely help us use pro.

So that's obviously that's one of the main kind of strengths of what we do is the video profile. So, in your opinion, how much value does that give to you when you're actually going through that process?

It gives us a huge amount of value, and it also cuts down the recruitment time because you're taking away one aspect of the interview that you would normally have to do to vet people or to get an understanding of who they are when we go through our interview process. Typically, it always forms a three stage process, you meet the person, you have a personal chat, you get to understand them as a as a character. You then go to the next stage, which is then, OK, can we talk a little bit more about your job and your skills, and then the last when it comes down to a final cut, We'll go through a situation, casestudy, whatever that will be, and we'll test them under pressure. If we can get that first one done where we've gone through the application phase, and then we have to meet with someone, if we can take that phase out and bolt that onto the first phase so we can see everyone's character, it helps us refine the interview process for us, but it also helps those students get past that first stage of, Do I need to put a splash of colour on my profile photo on my CV? because then it's a bit different to everybody else's. and it's not just a black and white one pager, but then equally you don't get five or six pages of a CV and you're going, Yeah, they put a lot of effort into this, but it's just it’s built up just for the sake of it. So it really helps us if we can get some form of understanding around what our first stage of the interview would be, the personal connection. Who are you applying for this position and if you can do it in Stage one? and I think it's one of both parties because that's what we're looking to is kind of streamline that process for clubs and organisations.

So how do you envisage platforms like EdExPro impacting on the efficiency of football clubs in their recruitment process?

Yeah, I think it's if we were to get 10 applicants for a position who've all got a EdExPro profile then it can be quite easy for me or me and the team or whoever's leading the recruitment process to go right. let's grab a coffee, we'll have half an hour, we'll sit in a meeting room and we'll go through everyone's profile and watch the videos and then as a result of watching the videos and going through each person's profile, we're all making notes, we've had a cup of coffee and we've got something to discuss by the end of it. And that makes things so much easier for us, not easier, bet more efficient for us a bit about.

What we're trying to do is kind of modernise the whole process, CV’S have been around for how many years? It's black and white text, adding in the video element to it, we've seen a lot of clubs like yourselves really take it forward.

To finish , this is our kind of one question that we always ask is for any kind of aspiring individual. What one piece of advice would you give to them that are looking to get into elite sport in any kind of capacity?

Do something you love, make sure coming to work in elite sport is something you love because it can be amazing, but it also can be the other way where it can make you fall out of love with it if you realise what it actually is from working from within, and as much as that's kind of off putting for people to hear, there's a real demand for working within this industry. It's become quite normal for me as we spoke about earlier, because that's the pathway that I follow through playing and coming into this a few years ago now. But, for people wanting to come into this industry, please don't think it's all sunshine and rainbows.It really isn't, but it can be. If you have that appreciation for what the demand is on you, it does consume you, It does take over your life, even when you're getting time away from the place, you're thinking about it because you want to be the best that you can be. But if you enjoy it and you live for the sport, or you live for this industry, I think. What's the phrase? if you do something you love, you never have to work a day in your life. It can be that, but it also can be extremely stressful and consuming for you. So, anyone that wants to come into work in professional sport, we're not here as a charity, we're not here to bring people into the environment who wanted it because they love it. We're here to win, we're here to win something. You know, there's a demand of a business, that's how we're successful, but we can have an unbelievable culture if we have people who buy into the process of wanting to win, have a real love and affiliation for what they're trying to do and love the subject that they're working within, they'll never have to work a day in their life.

And I guess that comes back to the video profiles is all that can be put into that profile Video, is that passion and love for what they want to do.

Yeah, and they can give us a background as to as to why, where sometimes when you you put it on a CV that you can't really demonstrate the why that much? because you lose that emotional connection but you can see with someone's face, and you can see with the mannerisms of how they talk, how much it means to them and why it's important to them. And all I would suggest with people that do use EdExPro to provide the videos for when they're applying for student placements with us, is demonstrate that, tell us how much it means to you, tell us how important it is, and don't be afraid to show your character and personality because that's exactly what we're looking for.

Yeah, well, that's fantastic, Thank you very much.