Career
Impact
"We kept saying we wanted to hire more former athletes, but every job posting we published required a four year degree and three years of relevant industry experience. We were filtering out exactly the people we said we wanted before they ever got to apply."
Head of Talent Acquisition, Growth Stage SaaS Company
Most companies that want to hire former athletes are not struggling to find them because athletes are hard to reach. They are struggling because their own job postings are quietly written to exclude them. A requirement for a specific degree, a demand for years of experience in a specific corporate function, dense internal jargon that assumes a candidate already speaks the company's language. None of it is intentional. All of it filters out exactly the candidates a company says it wants.
Writing a job posting that genuinely attracts former athletes is not about adding a line that says athletes welcome. It requires rethinking what the posting actually screens for, and rewriting it so the traits that matter most, the ones covered extensively across this blog, are the ones the posting actually asks about.
The Requirements Section Is Usually the Problem
Most job postings lead with a wall of requirements before ever describing what the role actually involves day to day. Years of experience, specific degree requirements, familiarity with specific tools or industry jargon. A former athlete reading that list sees a wall of things they do not have, and stops reading before reaching anything that would actually tell them they are a strong fit.
The fix is not to remove standards. It is to separate genuinely necessary requirements from assumed ones. A sales role rarely needs a specific degree to be performed well, yet degree requirements appear on the majority of entry level sales postings regardless of whether the role actually demands one. Auditing every requirement and asking whether it is truly necessary to perform the job, or simply assumed because that is how postings have always been written, removes barriers that were never load-bearing in the first place.
"We removed the degree requirement from our BDR posting and did not change anything else. Applications from candidates with athletic backgrounds increased noticeably within the first month. Nothing about the actual job changed. Just what we asked for on paper."
VP of Sales, Series B Technology Company
Lead With Traits, Not Credentials
Job postings that attract former athletes tend to lead with the traits the role actually rewards, coachability, resilience under rejection, competitive drive, daily discipline, rather than opening with credential requirements. This does not mean removing all mention of skills or experience. It means sequencing the posting so the first thing a candidate reads is what kind of person succeeds in the role, not what boxes they need to already check.
A posting that opens with something like this role rewards people who compete daily against their own performance and handle rejection without losing momentum speaks directly to an athlete's lived experience in a way that years of relevant experience required never will. It also happens to be a more accurate description of what actually predicts success in most sales, customer success, and business development roles, regardless of candidate background.
Describe the Ramp, Not Just the Role
Former athletes responding well to a posting want to understand what the first 90 days actually look like, not just the eventual responsibilities of the role once fully ramped. A posting that describes a structured onboarding process, clear early metrics, and a defined coaching relationship signals exactly the kind of environment covered in this series as producing the fastest ramp times for athlete hires.
A single paragraph describing the onboarding structure, your first 90 days will include structured training, daily coaching check-ins, and clear activity targets before you are expected to carry a full quota, does more to attract a strong athlete candidate than any list of desired qualifications, because it answers the question an athlete is actually asking: will this environment let me perform the way I know how to perform.
Use Language That Does Not Assume Corporate Fluency
Job postings written entirely in internal corporate shorthand, acronyms, tool names, and jargon specific to a particular industry, quietly filter out candidates who have not yet built fluency in that specific vocabulary, even when they have every capability needed to succeed in the role itself.
This does not mean writing down to candidates. It means writing clearly. Spell out acronyms on first use. Explain what a tool does rather than assuming familiarity with its name. A posting that is genuinely readable by someone outside the industry, while still accurately describing the role, reaches a meaningfully wider pool of qualified candidates who simply have not yet had the chance to learn the specific vocabulary a job posting assumed they already knew.
Where to Actually Post It
A well written posting still underperforms if it only appears on generic job boards, since former athletes, particularly those early in their career transition, are often not active on the same platforms as traditional corporate candidates. Posting directly through athlete-specific networks reaches candidates who are actively looking for exactly this kind of opportunity, rather than relying on a well-written posting to be discovered by chance on a general job board.
Free Agent exists specifically to solve this distribution problem, giving companies direct access to a verified pool of current and former elite athletes actively looking for opportunities, rather than hoping the right candidates stumble onto a generic listing.
A Simple Before and After
Before: Bachelor's degree required. 2 to 3 years of B2B sales experience. Proficiency with Salesforce and Outreach.io. Must be a self-starter with excellent communication skills.
After: This role rewards people who compete daily against their own performance and treat rejection as information, not discouragement. No specific degree required. Your first 90 days include structured training, daily coaching, and clear activity targets before you carry a full quota. We will teach you our tools. What we cannot teach is the discipline to show up every day regardless of how yesterday went.
Same role. Completely different signal about who belongs in it, and a completely different set of candidates who will see themselves in it.
The Posting Is the First Test
A job posting is the first filter a candidate encounters, and it filters in both directions. It tells athletes whether this is a place built for how they operate, and it tells the company what kind of candidate pool it is actually going to receive. Companies that rewrite their postings around the traits that actually predict success, rather than the credentials that have always been assumed necessary, consistently report a stronger and more diverse pool of qualified applicants.
If you are hiring and want direct access to the athletes these postings are written for, Free Agent is where that starts.
Get started at gofreeagent.com
FAQs About Writing Job Postings for Former Athletes
How do you write a job posting that attracts former athletes?
Lead with the traits the role actually rewards, such as coachability, resilience, and competitive drive, rather than opening with credential requirements. Remove degree and years-of-experience requirements that are not genuinely necessary to perform the job. Describe the onboarding and ramp structure clearly, and avoid dense internal jargon that assumes existing corporate fluency.
Should job postings remove degree requirements to attract athletes?
Where a degree is not genuinely necessary to perform the role, removing it as a stated requirement widens the applicant pool to include former athletes and other non-traditional candidates who may have every capability needed for the role without the specific credential. Many entry level sales, customer success, and operations roles do not actually require a specific degree to be performed well, despite degree requirements appearing on the majority of postings for these roles by default.
Where should companies post jobs to reach former athletes?
Generic job boards are the least effective channel, since former athletes, particularly those early in their career transition, are often not active on the same platforms as traditional corporate candidates. Athlete-specific networks like Free Agent give companies direct access to a verified pool of athletes who are actively looking for opportunities, rather than relying on a posting to be discovered by chance.