Hiring across the sports industry has been shut down for nearly three months, and when the system reboots, it will be updated to take full advantage of technology that went overlooked and underutilized before COVID-19. On the most recent episode of “SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead,” our Bill King discusses the sports job market, the hiring process and the ways those have forever changed with Turnkey Search Chair & Founder Len Perna.
On what the sports job market looks like:
Perna: There’s a job market right now, but it’s only for the most acute, most urgent, things that absolutely have to be filled, like coaches. You’ve got to have a coach of a team, general managers, athletic directors. I would say, on the business side, there are very crucial positions. If a position opens up or somebody retires, you can’t have the chair empty. There are jobs that are being filled right now, but the job market is not nearly as robust as it was three months ago.
On whether changes to the hiring process will last beyond the pandemic:
Perna: It will change forever. The discovery is something that we’ve had the technology to do for quite some time, but it was reflexive for these interviews to always take place in person, certainly the second- and third-round interviews. … I don’t see any reason to go back to the old days where you have to hop on the plane every time you want to do a one-hour interview. I think a lot more of this can be done with new technology. It’s cheaper, it’s faster, it’s greener and really you don’t lose a lot in the translation.
On how the job market has changed for graduating seniors:
Perna: Specialization is probably out the window right now for entry-level jobs. I see organizations bringing in people and asking them to do more. I also see them bringing in fewer entry-level positions, so the idea is that you would just come in entry-level and be in a single department, that’s a fairly recent thing. When I entered the industry, when you went in you were basically fair game for the sales department, the marketing department, the communications department, the operations department. You had to be a generalist, and every day you had a different job, which frankly was terrific. That was a great way for me to learn the industry.
