At Dartmouth, where almost a quarter of the student body participates in a varsity sport, rumors of athletic pipelines and exclusive athletes-only information sessions are infinite. But is there any truth to them?
As seniors, we know firsthand the stress and time involved in finding a job. For varsity athletes, the College runs the Dartmouth Peak Performance program to prepare them to transition from a life as a Division I athlete to a working in a professional setting.
The Dartmouth Peak Performance Career Connections program, a collaborative project run by the Athletics Department and the Center for Professional Development, prepares athletes by encouraging them to evaluate future career options.
The program encourages athletes to work on their resumes, write cover letters, travel for off-campus interviews and make connections within athletic networks, said Donnie Brooks, assistant athletics director for Dartmouth Peak Performance.
While the Center for Professional Development has an alumni database for all of campus, Brooks said the athletics department has its own, with over 1,000 former Big Green players.
“Dartmouth folks are crazy about Dartmouth, there seems to be pixie dust in the air,” Brooks said, emphasizing former athletes’ desire to assist current students.
Though rumors of a pipeline for athletes float around campus, the facts seem to tell a different story.
“It’s not a pipeline, it’s networking,” said center director Roger Woolsey. “Alumni have affinities for different things. Some have an affinity for their Greek house, some have an affinity for athletics, and that’s a good thing.”
Brooks organizes six to 10 events a term that connect employers and student-athletes. Athletes’ schedules differ from those of most students, so athlete-specific networking events are scheduled at times that work best for them, like an 8 a.m. breakfast with JPMorgan that we crashed.
There were 55 student-athletes dressed in business attire, much like any other recruiting event, but unlike the campus-wide info session, the JPMorgan breakfast with athletes was more interactive, with circles of chairs set up so attendees could have discussions with associates about different aspects of work at the firm.
And to top it all off, the whole event happened before most of campus was awake and after many of the athletes had an early morning lift session.
The programs that the Center for Professional Development offer to athletes are similar to its other programs, said Kate Yee, assistant director of the Center for Professional Development.
“It’s not that we favor one over the other,” she said. “We are just trying to accommodate their crazy schedules.”
Often employers, not the College, arrange for the events and specifically target athletes, Woolsey said.
What is it about athletes that attract this extra attention from employers?
“They know how to spend long hours, work under the pressure of time and they know how to learn from winning and definitely from losing,” Brooks said.
Athletes are also competitive, disciplined, balanced and team oriented by nature, Woosley said, traits that “translate very well into an organization.”
The job search is about marketing your skills, and for athletes this is about highlighting what distinguishes them from the student body.
“When we work with athletes, we target the fact that there are very specific skills and competencies that athletes have that they can provide employers,” Yee said.
Statistically, Brooks and Woolsey noted that the number of athletes that get jobs through corporate recruiting is similar to the student population overall.
While there are people on campus who work specifically to help athletes, it’s not about giving them an advantage as much as tapping into a network and skill set that they already possess by virtue of their status as Big Green athletes. Who can argue with that?