All managers want to hire people with discipline, determination, and drive. Women executives are no different.
And according to a newly-released study, women executives who once played competitive sports, in college or elsewhere, prefer to hire other people with athletics in their background.
The study by EY Women Athletes Business Network and espnW surveyed more than 400 female executives in five countries (20% were U.S. women). Half are C-Suite level executives, meaning that they serve as CEO, CFO, COO or the board of directors at a company. Of these top executives, over half (52%) played a sport at the college or university level. Only 3% did not participate in sports at any point in their lives.
Three out of four of the C-suite women executives said that candidates’ involvement in sport influences their hiring decisions, because they believe people who have played sports make good professionals. These executives attribute participation in athletics to qualities like a commitment tobringing projects to completion and greater abilities in motivating others. These intangible skills are hard to learn in a classroom, says Beth Brooke-Marciniak, EY’s Global Vice Chair for Public Policy. The executive women also put a premium on the discipline honed by sports, which they see translating to a person’s determination and work ethic.
But even more important are two other strengths: competitiveness and teamwork. Both are critical to success in today’s marketplace. Donna de Varona, Olympic Champion and adviser to EY’s Women Athletes Business Network, put it this way to me:
If you try out for a basketball team but quit in the middle of the first game, or if you choose not to pass the ball to your talented teammate because you don’t like her, or if you are unwilling to spend extra hours to work on a weakness, you aren’t going to get very far. Sports teaches fundamentals for success and that is why both men and women executives like to hire athletes. C-suite executives hire these women because they share a common bond and know when the pressure is on they will not be let down.
It’s been over 40 years since Title IX passed, compelling American high schools to spend on women’s sports in equal amounts to their spending on men’s. Its supporters dreamed of the day that participation levels would also be equal. We still have a ways to go. Betsey Stevenson’s analysis of national data shows that the median state has a 17 percentage point difference between the ratio of male athletes to male students and that ratio for girls. In fact, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the gap between male and female athletic participation at the high school levelhas grown in the past five years. When sportswomen become hiring executives, and favor candidates for the qualities that athletics engenders, they send a valuable signal that participation in sports is not only a right – it can offer many rewards.
NANETTE FONDAS
Nanette Fondas, co-author of The Custom-Fit Workplace, writes about business, work, and family issues. Her articles have appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, Psychology Today, Ms., HuffingtonPost, and scholarly journals. Follow her on Twitter @NanetteFondas.
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