Athletes4Hire Signs Merger Agreement with Career Athletes.

Athletes4Hire and Career Athletes, the two national leaders in the development of career opportunities and educational programs for current and former collegiate athletes and athletic departments, have merged together to form a new company called Career Athletes, LLC.

(EMWNews) July 15, 2008 — Athletes4Hire (www.athletes4hire.com), based in Olathe, Kansas (suburb of Kansas City), and its staffing and placement division, Competitive Resources Group (CRG), is the leading provider of on-campus career educational seminars to collegiate athletic departments. Career Athletes (careerathletes.com), based in Oakland, California, is the leading provider of custom career and community networking software to collegiate athletic departments and athletic alumni associations. Both companies offer exclusive job postings on their independent job boards, providing hiring managers the opportunity to network directly within the collegiate athlete demographic.

Under the recently completed merger, Career Athletes, LLC will continue to operate both the Athletes4Hire and Career Athletes websites while a new, fully integrated site is developed that will replace the existing sites. To date, more than 240,000 student-athletes in every sport, from more than 1,200 individual colleges and universities, have utilized Career Athletes, LLC as a valuable tool in their transition from athletics to the workplace.

Chris Smith, President of Athletes4Hire, explained their desire to merge, “Our goal from day one has been to offer current and former collegiate athletes a valuable array of services and tools to assist in their transition from sports to the workplace. We will be able to meet that goal sooner by combining forces with Career Athletes, and reposition our combined company as the most valuable transition link between a lifetime of athletics and the workplace.”

DJ Washington, National Director of On-Campus Training & Development for Athletes4Hire sees nothing but positives for college athletic departments. “We have conducted more than 800 on-campus career seminars…now we can further provide enhanced assistance to our partner schools like access to customized career networks, athletic alumni mentor programs, and increased access to exclusive job opportunities for athletes after college.”

Career Athletes, LLC, a privately-held, venture backed corporation, will be headquartered in Olathe, Kansas with offices in Oakland, CA and Atlanta, GA. Chris Smith will assume the title of President/CEO of Career Athletes, LLC, and Russ Hafferkamp will serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

About Career Athletes, LLC.

Career Athletes, LLC, (CALLC) possesses the largest member based community of current/alumni student-athletes, representing more than 325 active CHAMPS Lifeskills departments, and hundreds of national, regional, and local employers. Today, CALLC’s training and development seminars are the most relied upon in the nation, with more than 800 seminars conducted within college athletic departments at the NCAA, NAIA, and Junior Colleges level. CALLC endorses NCAA-compliance guidelines, enforces stringent privacy policy and terms/conditions, and has secured a long list of testimonials and references from all members of the career development community (athletes, administrators, and employers). The CALLC online job board is the largest of its kind, and is offered primarily for current and former student-athletes, connecting them directly with human resource directors and hiring managers at businesses large and small. More than 45 leading athletic departments utilize CALLC’s custom, secure ‘community network software’, creating online mentor connections within their own extended athletic family and alumni associations. CALLC possesses the most technologically advanced website, offering individual athletes a powerful, online ‘Athlete Dashboard’, organizing a long list of career development services, and unique user applications on one site to expand the ‘Commitment to Career Development’ shared by all college athletic departments.

Contact for more information:

DJ Washington, National Director, On-Campus Training & Development, (615) 319-4442

Chris Smith, President/CEO, info @ athletes4hire.com