Careers in Sport continues with its third episode, hosted by Denys Kulyk. The series gives a voice to the people around AISTS alumni and their careers. After Kristian D’Amore’s episode on Trajectory and Pouya Yaghoubinia’s on Transition, this third conversation shifts the angle. Indeed, it’s no longer about tracing one career in sport, but about meeting the person who, from behind the scenes, helps dozens of professionals build theirs.
Who is Céline Beaurain?
Céline Beaurain has been Professional Career Coach at AISTS since 2013, supporting participants of the Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Sport Management and Technology as they build their professional project. A certified Professional Coach (PCC, International Coaching Federation) and multilingual, she brings more than twenty years of international experience in recruitment and career consulting. Before AISTS, she spent five years at IMD as Associate Director of MBA Career Services, supporting a new class of participants from over 40 nationalities every year. Alongside her work at AISTS, she continues to collaborate with IMD on its Executive MBA, and founded her own coaching practice, Daring Success, in 2011.
Her path started far from sport: multilingual recruitment in London, then setting up an HR platform for an engineering consulting group, before moving into career services and coaching at IMD. This mix of recruitment, HR and coaching gives her a fairly rare double perspective: she has seen the job market from the employer’s side, and now spends most of her time on the candidate’s side, helping them make their case. A back-and-forth that directly shapes how she prepares MAS participants to position themselves in a market as competitive as international sport.
Céline’s Role at AISTS
Within the MAS’s Career and Leadership module, Céline offers individualised support to every participant. Concretely, her work is built around five areas:
- Clarifying the goal. Before looking for a job, you need to know which one to aim for. Céline helps each participant identify what they actually want to do, and where: what type of organisation, what function, what part of the world.
- Identifying what they bring to the table. Many profiles underestimate their own skills, or simply don’t know how to put them into words. Céline helps participants pinpoint their strengths and learn to present themselves in a market where competition is fierce.
- Moving from reactive to proactive. Rather than waiting for an opportunity to show up, Céline pushes participants to become active players in their own career: creating opportunities and making connections happen, instead of waiting for them.
- Preparing every step of an application, concretely. CV, cover letter, interviews: Céline works through each of these with participants, bringing a recruiter’s eye as much as a coach’s.
- Opening up her network. After years at AISTS, Céline has built a dense network of recruiters and former programme participants, one she puts at the disposal of current participants in their job search.
Why Passion Alone Won’t Get You a Career in Sport
Ask most people outside the industry what a career in sport looks like, and passion, prestige and excitement come up fast. Céline sees the gap up close, especially among candidates coming from the corporate world. “They expect that they’re going to be fast paced… and this is one of the things that is not happening necessarily in the sports industry.” Salaries can disappoint too, and the prestigious events and organisations everyone dreams of working for remain out of reach for most: “it’s a very competitive industry.”
Cutting Through the Noise: How to Stand Out in a Competitive Career in Sport
“Now especially with AI, these famous organisations receive sometimes up to thousands applications, and sometimes within only a couple of days. So competition is super tough.” Organisations like the IOC, UEFA or FIFA can receive thousands of applications for a single role, sometimes within days. In that environment, Céline says two things separate the candidates who get through: being genuinely close to the job description rather than a generic fit, and having already built a relationship with someone inside the organisation. “Recruiters don’t like to take risks,” she explains, a near-perfect match on paper, paired with a warm connection, is what gets a CV to the top of the pile.
Where candidates most often fall short: treating passion as the pitch. “Everybody is passionate,” she says, so a cover letter needs to go further and demonstrate real research into the role and the organisation. She also flags a more structural mistake, reacting only once a job is posted, instead of building relationships long before an opportunity opens up.
The Inside Track: Why Network Matters More Than the CV in a Career in Sport
Does an outsider without a network stand a chance? Céline pushes back on the idea that it’s impossible. “I’ve seen people that didn’t have the network, but had the right relevant experience get the job, because they were very close to what the job was requiring.” Fit alone can open a door. Fit combined with relationships increases the odds further, that’s the whole equation.
Asked for the one vital principle behind years of coaching on networking, her answer is immediate: “Build the relationship, nurture the relationships with people.” Not transactionally, and not only when something is needed. “Only reach out to people when you need them, this is the worst thing to do.” Genuine interest in the person, sustained over time, is what turns a contact into an open door years later.
What a Master’s Degree Can (and Can’t) Do for a Career in Sport
For anyone considering a programme like the MAS, Céline is candid about what education actually buys you. It gives you a real understanding of how the industry works, the vocabulary and context to build your story with recruiters. Done well, it also gives you experience through hands-on, multicultural project work, and a network through guest speakers and alumni. What it can’t do is turn a diploma into a job on its own: ” The recruiter will not hire you only because of your paper, they will also hire you because of your experience.” Still, she’d always recommend some form of education, if only because it signals commitment to the transition.
Own Your Career: Staying the Architect of Your Career in Sport
For professionals further along, Céline sees a different set of traps. Growing in seniority demands political and influencing skills that many haven’t had to develop before. And too many professionals wait for their employer to propose the next step. Her advice is the opposite: “Whereas you should be, what I would recommend, is that you always remain the architect of your career.”, know where you want to go, and create the opportunities to get there from the inside, rather than waiting to be tapped.
The same logic applies to organisational upheaval. People who spend ten or fifteen years in one company, then face a restructuring, often discover their network went quiet along the way. “You’re back to not zero, because you have all this experience. But you are missing this element of network that is really key in a career.”
The Passion Trap: When Passion Becomes a Negotiation Tool
Céline is direct about one uncomfortable dynamic: passion cuts both ways. It’s what draws people into the industry, and it’s also what some organisations lean on to justify below-market salaries. “Recruiters benefit, take advantage of the fact that people are really just dreaming to work in the industry, to propose salaries that are indeed below the market… because they know that’s the dream of the people.” It’s a pattern she believes pushes some professionals out of the industry entirely, once the trade-off stops feeling worth it.
Negotiating Beyond Salary in a Career in Sport
Her advice for candidates walking into that dynamic starts before the negotiation itself: do the homework, using salary benchmarks that exist for the industry, and decide in advance what gap is acceptable. In the conversation itself, lead with transferable skills rather than opening with salary too early, ”the company hasn’t necessarily bought you enough” in the first round. The stronger the fit becomes clear over the process, the stronger the negotiating position.
And salary, she says, is only one line item. Remote work, insurance, pension contributions, transport, daycare, in a market like Switzerland’s, these can matter as much as the number on the contract. “Think beyond the basic salary to potentially… offer other axis of negotiation.”
Success Follows Fulfilment: Rethinking Ambition in a Career in Sport
Years of coaching professionals through transitions taught Céline something personal about fulfilment: “If you’re unhappy into what you’re doing, life is too short to stay in what you’re doing.” She’s candid that change rarely happens overnight, bills still need paying, but the first step is naming what isn’t working, and starting to act on it through courses, volunteering or pro bono work. Having lost her mother young, and watched others’ lives change direction without warning, her advice is not to postpone that plan.
She’s equally clear that transition comes with uncertainty, and uncertainty tests real human needs, for recognition, achievement, status. Expecting the “emotional rollercoaster” in advance, she says, makes it easier to navigate.
On ambition specifically, Céline has turned down director and manager promotions that didn’t align with what mattered to her. “Success follows when you are at the right place… My ambition was my own fulfilment and playing with my strengths.”
Why Sport?
For Céline, the answer starts on a track and field circuit at age five, following in the footsteps of her father, a track and field coach. Football, tennis and above all PSG matches rounded out what she calls “part of the family DNA,” passed down through generations. Thirteen years ago, a former IMG colleague working at AISTS reached out about building a career services offering for participants. “Would it be fantastic to bring my expertise in terms of career coaching, career services, to the benefit of people working in an industry that I find really cool, and individuals that have a passion.” That’s how she landed in sport, and never left.
Watch the Full Interview
To discover Céline’s full story, including two decades of coaching stories from inside and outside the sport industry, watch the complete interview here.
The Careers in Sport series continues with nine more conversations exploring the many paths to work in the sport industry. Stay tuned!
