Andrew Sidney: Houston Rockets Director of Group and Inside Sales - a podcast by Brian Clapp - Work in Sports

 Sometimes finding your fit in the sports industry requires you to figure out what you don't like before you figure out what you do like. Andrew Sidney of the Houston Rockets explains in this weeks Work in Sports podcast.Hi, everybody, I’m Brian Clapp Director of content for WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast.A few weeks back on our little program I mentioned the idea of having a company first attitude towards job seeking. We all so often look for roles that fit our skill set, which makes sense, and is still a logical way to search, but I also espouse the benefits of looking at the companies that fit you, your personality and your career goals -- even better, when they have a reputation for training and developing staff.Think of it this way -- your fit, early in your career, matters for your overall ceiling. Would David Carr, #1 draft pick of the expansion Houston Texans in the 2002 draft been a more successful player if he hadn’t gone to an expansion team and get 249 times over his first 4 years in the league?Would Tom Brady have been as successful if he hadn’t landed under Bill Belichick and played in one system his entire career?Would Devin Booker be a household name if he wasn’t putting up huge numbers for a terrible team in Phoenix?  Your fit matters. Athletes don’t have a choice, you do. I know it’s idealistic when you are first starting out to think you can demand anything, or be selective in your roles. We are all guided by fear and when you are job searching you tend to go wherever someone is interested in you.But, consider for a second, how important culture and role and development and training really are to your future. I started out at CNN/Sports Illustrated and I look at that like I was getting my Masters from the experts in journalism. That was a perfect fit for me and set me up for every success I have had.If I took another offer, at a small station in the midwest, I may have toiled there and never really took off in my career. I may never have developed a profile, or really enhanced my skills.I remember starting at CNN and we had a few weeks of training before we did a damn thing. That was the best possible thing that could have happened to me. It made me comfortable, and it set me up to succeed.I was watching Bar Rescue the other day, yeah I watch some bad TV I’m sure you do too, but anyway, they were talking about national food chains, your Chili’s and Applebee’s and the training they put all of their servers through. The steps of service I think they called it.They take the effort to train their employees so their customers get an expected level of service and come back again and again. What does this have to do with sports jobs?Well, it’s simple, when you begin to isolate organizations you really want to work for, part of your research should be into their training and their culture. How much effort do they put into making their employees the best they can be?Today’s guest Andrew Sidney, Houston Rockets Director of Group and Inside Sales, spent 5 years with the Frisco RoughRiders, double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. And as Andrew will tell you, they were dedicated to training staff, teaching them best practices, how to operate, and how to succeed. They set their staff up with apartments in the area, and clearly cared about their development. That is what you are looking for in your first jobs and internships. An organization that sees you as more than a means to an end, an opportunity to solve their problems -- you want to be part of an organization that will help you develop and learn.  Take a note out of John Elway's playbook -- the top-rated player in the 1983 draft, Elway was going to be drafted by the woebegone Colts and basically say “no” Forcing a trade to the Broncos.Had he not invested in himself and his future, spurning the Colts for the more established Broncos,

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