IU Bloomington Students Score Professional Skills With Sports Career Game Plan (SCGP)

The full story:

Background

The Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington is one of the largest schools of public health in the United States. Since 1985, IU Bloomington’s interdisciplinary Sport Marketing and Management Program has prepared graduates to establish careers in nearly all segments of the highly competitive sports industry. Attracting students from across the country and around the world, the program is ranked a top four U.S. Undergraduate Sport Marketing & Management Program by CollegeChoice.net.

Opportunities

Joshua Shelton, Director of Business Development and Partnerships and Lecturer in Sport Management for IU Bloomington, teaches Intro to Sport Management (SPH-M 211). The course examines the spectrum of career options in the sport management profession, emphasizing career planning, sport management terminology, and specific skills and requirements.

Realizing that students could benefit from more opportunities to develop their professional skills, Shelton sought a solution to better prepare them to enter the job market.

“We can teach students the course content and theories, but we also need them to walk away with the soft skills to kick-start their careers by becoming productive and proficient professionals,“ he said.

Another instructor at IU Bloomington recommended Shelton look into the Sports Career Game Plan (SCGP) from WorkInSports, part of the employment platform iHire’s family of 57 industry-specific talent communities. The SCGP is a comprehensive online engaged learning program designed to equip students with the right competencies to accelerate their careers, and two other IU Bloomington professors had already used it successfully.

Solution

The SCGP offers a sequential, curriculum-based approach to professional development, which was just the type of program Shelton was seeking. With 175+ career advice articles, checklists, worksheets, quizzes, videos, audio content, and interviews, the SCGP is broken into five modules: Gaining the RIGHT Experience for Your Sports Career; Building and Maintaining Your Sports Industry Network; Mastering Your Resume, Cover Letter, and Personal Brand; Interviewing for Jobs and Internships in the Sports Industry; and Soft Skills to Move Your Sports Career Forward.

All materials are accessible online while students also receive a five-year Premium job seeker membership on the WorkInSports platform. There, they can access thousands of sports industry jobs and exclusive tools and resources to set them up for success.

Although the SCGP is developed for up-and-coming sports industry professionals, its advice is applicable across industries. This was a plus for Shelton, whose class comprises students not only in the Sport Marketing and Management Program, but also those studying business, media, and more.

“Students are able to go through the program and learn how to become a professional regardless of the industry they want to go into after graduation,“ Shelton commented.

To integrate SCGP with Intro to Sport Management, Shelton built the modules into the professional skills segment of the course, using SCGP as a framework. Students work through each module, completing the assignments and discussing key takeaways in class.

“Students like that SCGP is structured. It provides real steps that they implement, like writing a resume and building their personal brand,“ Shelton said. “We’ve had really positive feedback overall.“

The SCGP sections on personal branding were especially well received by Shelton’s class – some commented that they had never really thought about that element of their professional development.

Results

In Shelton’s first semester using SCGP, approximately 425 students completed the course, bringing the total number of IU Bloomington students who’ve used SCGP to 925. Shelton’s students achieved the main goal he set for them: to leave the class with the ability to be a productive professional.

“At the beginning of the course, I talk candidly about how you need to create a vision and a plan based on that vision. What is the process and what steps are you going to take to make that happen?“ Shelton explained.

For example, students must identify their target career, look at real job descriptions for potential roles, and see what skills they need to achieve that job. Then, they determine how they are going to gain those skills and find the right opportunities. Additionally, all students come out of the class with a resume and polished LinkedIn profile – two efforts for which SCGP provides guidance.

After the first semester using SCGP, students told Shelton how beneficial the program was in helping them with personal branding and networking effectively with class guest speakers (including WorkInSports’ VP of Content and Engaged Learning and SCGP course creator, Brian Clapp). One student said she was able to get an interview based on what she learned from the course.

“The SCGP platform does a great job of sequentially providing students with opportunities to develop their professional skills. It’s an entire curriculum that covers all bases. I haven’t found anything better than what WorkInSports provides,“ Shelton concluded.

Shelton plans to continue using SCGP in the Intro to Sport Management course in the fall 2025 semester and beyond.

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