The Australian sport management job market: an advertisement audit of employer need

Abstract

Graduate employability remains an issue of concern for government, industry, higher education providers and students. This study aims to determine employer needs of the Australian sport management job market and discusses the findings of a six-month occupational audit of sport management positions in Australia. The findings present an employer perspective of the nature and published expectations of sport management opportunities. In particular, the most frequently demanded management and leadership expectations were found to be achieving results, working with people, using resources and providing direction. Entry-level recruitment demanded a skill-set that included excellent communication, planning/organization and problem-solving skills, and the selection criteria emphasized experience, qualifications and an appropriate work ethic/passion. This research provides a benchmarking profile of Australian sport management opportunities from which fitness of purpose and curricular development can be further researched and developed.

Content analysis of vacancy advertisements for employability skills: Challenges and opportunities for informing curriculum development

“…The importance of work experience was also confirmed and taken to support the importance of work integrated learning and industry placements, (Messum et al, 2011). The value of using content analysis of advertisements as a supplement to employer interviews to identify job requirements was also confirmed (Reeves & Hahn, 2012;Emery et al,2012 …”

“…It was argued that although national competency sets exist for many professions, employer requirements may be different and present more up to date skill requirements useful for curriculum renewal (Broome & Gillen, 2014). Even if this was not the original intention, findings from other studies noted the implications for curriculum development (Lavy & Yadin, 2013;Emery, Crabtree, & Kerr, 2012;France, 2010;Kennan et al, 2009;Arcodia & Barker, 2003). Certainly employers have seen value in listing frequently used competencies to attract potential employees as opposed to using competencies described in the literature and from professional bodies (Reeves & Hahn, 2012;Cramer & Tenzek, 2013).…”

“…More recently, web based sites appear to be the major source of job vacancies. From one (Omar et al, 2012) to as many as 13 online sites were used (Emery et al, 2012 frequently used unless historical trends were being researched as in Finland . Table 3 reports the number of advertisements reviewed and sampling procedures.…”

Job and career satisfaction in an austerity environment: the role of job security and passion towards work

“…Thus, in line with previous studies on passion at work, we hypothesize -for the first time in the sport management literature -that the two types of passion would predict job satisfaction, but in opposite directions: Although a few studies have established that the two types of passion have important implications for job satisfaction, empirical works have so far failed to extend these implications to career satisfaction. Career satisfaction, defined as the degree to which one is satisfied with the progress of his/her career (Boies and Rothstein, 2002), is a particularly important construct for the sport management scholarly community if one considers the proliferation of educational programmes designed to prepare the future professional administrative workforce in sport (Emery et al, 2012). Surprisingly, it is only the intended (emphasis on the original) career satisfaction that has been examined in sport management literature (see Cunningham et al, 2005).…”

The results of the non-financial audit at 16 elite Hungarian sport federations

“…According to MacLean (2009), the audit is a performance management tool to analyze the contributors' routine and to direct it to a deliberate route which can increase the performance of the whole organization. The term of audit appears in a limited way in the related literature; on one hand, an audit is described as an eff ective monitoring tool of the sport facilities (Lee et al, 2013), on the other hand it is an occupational inspection of sport management jobs (Emery et al, 2012). Perrit (1989) uses the audit as an instrument to measure marketing activity within club leisure sport.…”