Spotlight: Ido Singer on pivoting from basketball coach to recruiter

By Joe Opaleski, Olivia Kozlevcar & Ido Singer

Switching from basketball coach to executive recruiter may not seem like a natural career progression, but several full-time Charles Aris team members come from a background in athletics.

Associate Recruiter Ido Singer, a former D1 basketball coach, believes the skills he learned in the world of sports naturally prepared him to work in corporate America.

According to Ido, the discipline, or “grit,” ingrained in you from competitive sports is directly transferable to recruiting. In his case, coaching basketball gave him both grit and a technical background in player recruitment. These skills helped him earn his place at Charles Aris.

Nearly two decades on the court

Singer has played basketball since he was seven years old and had the chance to play professionally for several years before he moved from Israel to the United States. Once in the States, he began coaching at various levels before taking a hiatus to earn his psychology degree from Capella University in Minneapolis.

The coaching bug eventually returned, and Ido went back to coaching basketball full-time. He bounced between coaching middle school, high school and college teams before he found a spot at the University of North Carolina Greensboro coaching women’s D1 basketball.

Although Ido was a successful coach, the nature of the profession was difficult to manage, especially with a wife and young children. In 2021, he found himself debating between his career of nearly two decades and a new journey into corporate America. When he connected with Charles Aris Practice Leader Josh Kotelnicki, a former college football coach of 16 years, he saw his own potential and decided to take the plunge into executive recruiting.

Managing a sharp career pivot

Ido admits he knew little about the business world upon joining Charles Aris, let alone his soon-to-be specialty practice areas of private equity and strategy consulting, but he picked up on things fast. The trials and tribulations he fought through in the world of athletics built a foundation on which he could quickly find success in the executive search industry.

Similar to the way he recruited top talent for his teams while coaching, Ido is now landing A-level talent for clients at Charles Aris. In his first year, he completed successful searches in the strategy and private equity industries and earned Associate of the Month for January of 2023.

Ido’s advice for anyone looking to switch careers

It’s difficult to jump from one career path to another, especially when your prior experience is in a field that seems so different from the one you’re entering. A key takeaway from Ido’s experience is that many of his skills from coaching could be applied to recruiting, and there are similarities in any two careers if you have the motivation to find them.

If you’d like to learn more about our search capabilities or talk about your career path, call/email Ido Singer at (336) 217-9190 / ido.singer@charlesaris.com.