7 Things You Need to do in College to Prepare for your Sports Career

In this episode we dig into the deeper purpose of college. How to really leverage the college experience into a sports job.

Hi everybody I’m Brian Clapp Director of Content for WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast…

The purpose of this show, our mission statement you could say, is pretty simple – we’re trying to help people like you start or grow their career in the multi-billion dollar global sports industry.

For all the similarities that the sports industry have to any other business, there are also many subtle and not so subtle specifics that can help you become the person sports employers want.

Why sports? Why should you pursue a career in something like sports? I’ll break it down to you like this:

From an economic standpoint – the sports industry is consistent, in good times and bad economically, sports still thrives. In fact during the last major US recession… The Economist said “the sports industry by and large is holding up to the recession better than most industries.”

Why, because people still pay to see their heroes perform, to entertain, to escape the troubles of life or to add to them. Sports do well in various market conditions.

But on a more emotional standpoint – why work in sports? Because it’s something you feel passionate about. It’s something you choose to do. When you pick up your phone in the morning, you check ESPN.com, when you flip through channels you go to FS1 – sports doesn’t feel like work, because it’s something you are genuinely interested in.

But it is, it is work. It is a huge global industry – it does take specific skills and methods to achieve greatness – which is why we are here.

If you aren’t familiar with our site – WorkinSports.com – let me learn you a little something. We work with over 8,000 sports employers to promote their job openings. We put all the active jobs in one spot, so you can easily find and apply for your next dream position. We’re a service, saving you time and money, by helping you find sports jobs you wouldn’t otherwise know about. We’ve been doing this for almost 20 years… we can really help you.

As for this podcast – Mondays are question and answer day – you ask the questions, I answer them. Who am I? Well, I’m Brian, I’ve been in the sports industry for 20 years primarily in the sports media, at CNN/Sports Illustrated and Fox Sports. I’ve been in charge of staffing, budgets, producing content, managing workflows, interviewing and a whole lot more. Plus I’ve interviewed 200+ sports executives on what they look for in employees… so I’m a source of information for you.

On Wednesdays I interview industry experts – for example this Wednesday – Leigh Steinberg, super agent. If you haven’t heard of him…you don’t know sports. (Jerry Maguire was based on him).

So that’s the rundown – I don’t do this everytime, but we are getting tons and tons of new listeners each week and sometimes I like to set the table for everyone.

Now let’s get into today’s question –

“Hey Brian, this is Aaliyah from Alabama – I’m going into my freshman year of college and I really want to make my college career productive and efficient. You’ve talked a great deal about how someone should prepare for their job search while in college…but I’m curious, are there other things we should be doing while in college to make ourselves really attractive to employers and marketable?”

This is a fun question Aaliyah and as always…I have a few ideas that can help:

1: Frame your mind around this – your GPA doesn’t mean squat

2: Avoid as much debt as you can

3: Play a sport…on the real team, club team, intramural team – whatever

4: Use your Career Center

5: Become really good friends with LinkedIn

6: Work on your listening and conversational skills

7: Define your ideal companies early… study them

Listen to the whole episode for all the details on these points!