General Sports Worldwide, a full-service global sports consulting and management firm, has acquired sports career development platform theClubhouse® as part of its rapidly growing Executive Search and Team Consulting Division. Founded by sports industry leader Bob Hamer, theClubhouse® focuses on providing individuals who are currently in, or want to work in, the sports vertical a wide range of career development services.
In this brief Q-and-A, Lou DePaoli, a Managing Director at General Sports Worldwide, shares some insights into what’s in store for the popular digital platform.
How will the addition of theClubhouse® enhance General Sports Worldwide’s search, consulting, and training efforts?
Our Executive Search and Team Consulting team believes personal and professional development are essential to career success and for building high-performing teams as leaders. As such, we feel theClubhouse® will allow us to further our vision to provide development tools and guidance to a much broader audience. We look forward to being able to provide additional resources and tools for our clients, members and job candidates.
How do you envision using some of the existing features on theClubhouse to better engage college students seeking mentorship and opportunities?
The Mentorship platform in theClubhouse® gives job seekers of all skill levels the opportunity to receive and/or provide guidance to others, which is extremely valuable for college students looking to enter the sports and entertainment industry. We have relationships with many colleges and universities currently and will look to increase and enhance those relationships while establishing many new ones.
Plus, there is currently incredible content on theClubhouse® for colleges and their students to consume in the forms of blog posts on best practices, webinars on various sports topics, sales training, mental health awareness, and more that will provide valuable insight from leaders throughout the world of sports and entertainment.
You’ve mentioned theClubhouse being a “robust content platform” in the past. How do you envision using - and expanding - that platform?
That is true, theClubhouse® is robust as it is today. That said, we do plan on expanding the platform, and step one will be to survey our members to understand what they would like to see from theClubhouse® and then go from there. We plan on increasing the amount of content throughout the site and will increase the number of companies and the variety of roles that are posted on our job board almost immediately.
How important is it to be able to use this platform to enhance and support DEI offerings for job seekers?
Enhancing our DEI efforts and offerings are among our highest priorities. General Sports Worldwide’s partnership with The Fritz Pollard Alliance Foundation is one step in that direction, and we plan on increasing our efforts to provide a forum where candidates from diverse backgrounds can interact with others from across the sports and entertainment landscape, including being able to connect with a mentor via theClubhouse® mentorship platform. We also want to create alliances with HBCUs as well, providing faculty and students with a forum to engage with so they can find a role in the sports industry and/or mentor others within the industry.