Does Being a Student-Athlete Help You Land a Job in Sports? Work in Sports Podcast e028

Summary: Does Being a Student-Athlete Help You Land a Job in Sports?<br> Hi everybody, I’m Brian Clapp, Director of Content for WorkinSports.com and this is the WorkinSports podcast – Monday QA session!<br> <br> Before I get into this weeks question a quick promo for Wednesday’s sports industry interview – any hockey fans out there? Well, we’ve got NHL Director of Event Communication and Player Relations Chris Wojcik on the show Wednesday…we talk about planning huge events like the Winter Classic, All-star game and international games to expand the brand… all that goes into them and his efforts to manage the communication process. Plus we get into player relations, working as the conduit between the athlete and media… it was a really exciting interview that I hope you’ll listen to on Wednesday.<br> <br> I’ll also be self-promotional by thanking Daniel Brunk who just posted one of the most flattering and humbling reviews of our podcast on iTunes. So thank you Daniel.<a href="https://www.workinsports.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/qa_cover.png"></a><br> <br> So enough with the promotion – let’s get to the question already!<br> <br> This question comes in from Tricia from Alabama:<br> <br> She says – Hi Brian I am a student athlete at a division 2 college playing women’s basketball. I know I’m not good enough to make the pro’s but I feel like being a student-athlete has prepared me to work in the sports industry more than someone who hasn’t played college sports. How do I leverage all that I experienced as a student-athlete to help me get a job after I graduate?<br> <br> Tricia there are so many thoughts running through my head right now… let me try to compose myself.<br> <br> I feel I could give you about 30 reasons why being a student-athlete is a major advantage in the sports industry, and I know many people who are in charge of hiring for the sports industry who feel the same way. But I’ll try to narrow it down to my 3-4 best reasons and some advice.<br> <br> First off, there are over 460,000 NCAA student athletes competing in 24 sports each year. That is a sick number. And if you ask me, a vast majority of these student athletes should work in the sports industry becausze they have an intimate knowledge of what it takes to be connected to sports.<br> <br> But before I get on my passion plea…Let’s start with two major pieces of advice.<br> <br> 1: There are those who played sports in college and those who played, and learned the business of sports while in college. Who are you?<br> <br> Here’s the difference – if you are someone who focused on practice and games, and didn’t look around much outside of game film, didn’t talk to coaches about managing players, didn’t talk to trainerd about how they learned their craft, didn’t talk to the Athletic Director and learn more about what goes into their job, didn’t talk to the operations staff, the sales staff, the marketing staff… sure there are skills you learned, but you didn’t get the major benefit of being a student-athlete.<br> <br> You said it best, you knew you weren’t going to be a pro, so my advice to anyone who is in the game just for the love, is to use that all access pass to learn things other regular students, don’t even have access to. Talk to the AD. Talk to the staff. Learn how things operate!<br> <br> Don’t just play…learn the business.<br> <br> 2: You have to leverage who you have learned. I’ve seen too many resumes that just have a line item that says “2-year starter on Women’s Basketball team”. You need to sell the story. Tell me more. Tell me what you learned, the skills you bring to the workforce that differentiate you…not just awards and titles, I want to hear how this affected you.<br> <br> Student athletes are leaders, they know how to work as part of a team, they know how to manage their time, they know how to take a loss and rebound from it,