Sports Career Options: Finding Your Sports Industry Fit

if you're looking for actionable career

advice for the sports industry

this is the place for you

[Music]

hey everybody i'm brian clapp i am the

host of the work in sports podcast and

i've been working in the sports industry

for the last 20 years a lot of my

experiences in the broadcast media

cnn sports illustrated fox sports

northwest but i've been at work in

sports for last seven years

and the whole point of this youtube

channel is to give you actionable career

advice things you can actually

put to work today that's a big word for

me i like actionable advice

i'm not into the theoretical stuff i'm

not into the you know fluffery or

puffery i

really like to give you actual things

you can do

so if you're coming here that's what you

can expect out of me we're going to

continue to do this youtube series we

have our work in sports podcast

which i hope all of you are subscribers

to where i interview

a lot of people in the sports industry

about their careers how they got where

they are

what they've learned along the way it's

great it's so cool i love doing it i

also do a monday podcast where i answer

fan questions which of course you can be

involved in as well

but i wanted to add this youtube channel

to give more of a visual component to it

all and just

really get into some of these actionable

tactics in a different way

so let's start with this premise let's

start at the beginning

so many people in our audience are

sports

fans and they think to themselves i love

sports this is something that totally

does it for me

i should make this into a career which

totally makes sense because

let's be honest working in sports at

least to me i'm biased i get it

is a lot cooler than working in a

cubicle each day now again there's some

jobs in sports or

in a cubicle as well but you get this

really cool envelope being able to go to

games and see cool things and be around

athletes and all this other fun stuff

so why not pursue that if you've

identified that as your passion

but here's the deal it can be confusing

because the sports industry is just that

it's an industry it's not a job

itself you can't just say i want to work

in sports you have to be more specific

you have to figure out what that means

for you

and if you really look at the industry

it's a big business

and what i mean by that is there are

jobs in finance and hr there are jobs in

sales and marketing and operations

there are a lot of jobs you'd find

anywhere in any industry

so having a good business knowledge can

really affect that sports just puts a

really cool rapper on it right but there

are certain roles in sports that are

different

right they're a little different than

you'd see in any other industry coaches

scouting player development some of

those things are very sport specific you

don't see

microsoft having a coach or a scout i

don't think

maybe they do i have no idea but it's

not the same as what we see in the

sports industry

but our goal in this and in this

conversation isn't just to say

yay working in sports is fun is to say

how do you find your fit in the industry

how do you figure out what it is that's

going to work for you

and make you feel you know satisfied

and enthused and excited about going to

work i've loved my career i've enjoyed

every step of it

i continue to enjoy everything i do in

the sports industry

and i want you to find that as well i

keep thinking about and part of the

reason i want to have this conversation

is okay keep thinking about one of our

most recent podcast episodes

i interviewed alison bickford who's the

director of corporate partnership

activation

with the seattle kraken and yes fans of

the show know that i dislike to say the

seattle kraken

and allison said that she was going to

send me a t-shirt so i'm very excited

okay but um allison said something that

really stood out to me

we were talking about how working in the

sports industry changes you in a lot of

ways like

if you see things differently and you

you identify things you wouldn't

normally if you were just watching as a

fan

and she said inc and she works in

corporate partnership activation and we

can talk about what that means at some

other time but

really what you're saying is i watch

games now and i'm staring at the dasher

boards at the hockey game and i'm

noticing what other corporate partners

there are and i'm noticing this that and

the other thing

and i kept thinking is that what that

means is she found something that not

only she enjoys doing

but like it's in her like she thinks

about it she wants to get better at it

she

notices these things out there isn't

that what we're all looking for out of

our career like that thing that kind of

motivates us to go a little bit deeper

or know a little bit more and to be

really

engaged with what we're doing you don't

want to just go through the motions you

don't want to just have a career you

want to do something you feel good about

so that's the big question well i love

sports i get this all the time

i love sports i know everything about

sports i'm a really big fan i love this

team i love that team

what should i do with my career that's

not something i can answer

or anybody else that's a self-discovery

thing but let's talk about how that can

happen

what i mean by that is let's go back a

little bit i'll tell you a little bit of

my backstory

really quick i won't bore you with it

but i started out in college and i was a

biology and chemistry double major

thinking i wanted to go become a

physical therapist and after my first

two years i was like yeah this ain't it

for me

um and i had to figure out what that was

and my mom said to me she's like look

you watch sports when you don't have to

it's not a job to you it's just

something you want to do all the time

you watch espn you wait for headline

news to have sports updates you'd always

are reading the newspaper and reading

everything going on in sports

figure out something there and that was

like where the light bulb went on like

oh yeah i guess i could do that right

but i had to go through that process of

discovery and then it was figuring out

where that fit was

and for me i got a little bit lucky i

just said hey i love

espn i love storytelling i love the long

form i love the highlights i love the

everything

why don't i aim for that and so i

started focusing in that direction

and ended up getting hired and starting

my career that way that's how i've

discovered my fit

it doesn't always work that way for

everybody so

let's get to the actionable advice let's

get to the part where you can start

putting this to work

we have on our job board right now at

workingsports.com 22

967 active jobs that's a lot of

opportunity

and just to put it in perspective pre

right around

when coronavirus started really being a

big thing last year we dropped down to

about 7 000

right that was one of our lowest ever in

the history of our company the ac

the industry just wasn't that active

makes sense we don't need to get into

that here we don't need to relive all of

that

but what's happened since is that we've

started to rebound and you hear that

number 22

967 you're like whoa that sounds like a

lot

how am i ever gonna figure out where my

thing is that sounds kind of like

boiling the ocean right it's like i'm

gonna put all this effort into looking

through all these jobs and i'm never

gonna really figure out what it is

because there are as i started to say

jobs and sales jobs as a trainer jobs

in marketing operations being a gm front

office scouts

everything right media relations public

relations there's so many things you can

be doing in the sports industry

it can feel like a lot so

how do we boil it down to a more

manageable number well what i find most

people do on a job board like ours

is they go in and they start looking for

terms that they can identify with

like marketing i'll look at some

marketing jobs see if that's what does

it for me or i'll

take a sales class in school or i'll

take a marketing class or an operations

class or an economics class and i'll try

these things out

and that's fine that is a methodology

that's been tried and true and a lot of

people have done over the years

what i would suggest though is let's

take that 22 967 number

and narrow it down a little bit but not

by

job vertical let's do it by terms

that are used for entry-level jobs if

you're starting out and you're trying to

find your fit you're trying to find that

glimmer of something that sounds

interesting to you

you're trying to find that thing that

makes you feel passionate and excited

like whoa that's super cool

now i've been in the industry for 20

years and i look through our job board

and i'll look at jobs sometimes and be

like that sounds really cool and it's a

little late for me to start over but

again

there's a lot of cool stuff out there

you have to go through these processes

of discovery

so what do you do you go on a site like

ours workingsports.com

and instead of searching for a keyword

like social media

or operations you search for a term that

is associated with

entry-level jobs and i'm talking about

coordinator

a word like coordinator if you search

for coordinator on our job board right

now you'll narrow our list down to 1

126 jobs and that's still pretty large

but what that tells you is

those are more entry-level roles and

you're going to get a cross-section of

all the available opportunities out

there

social media coordinator i'm looking

right now social media coordinator

operations quarter marketing coordinator

sales operations coordinator partnership

activation coordinator

these are various entry level jobs

across the line

of sports hiring at teams hiring in

agencies

hiring at organizations non-profits

whatever

all different types of opportunities we

work with 8 000 employers so

like we're really spanning all of it out

there media companies whatever

okay athletic department college

athletic departments but if you search

that term coordinator

you're going to see a lot of different

entry-level jobs and you can start to

read through those job descriptions

now i know it sounds boring to read

through job descriptions but if you

start to go through and you're like huh

operations coordinator i wonder what

they do and you see an operations

coordinator for a g-league basketball

team or something like that

and you start to read through it and

you're like that sounds kind of cool

well then start to lean a little deeper

start to search for more jobs and

operations start to search for more jobs

in that field

and you can start to see like does this

feel like something that's a match for

me

take some notes on it write it down

start to give yourself a little bit of a

background on what some of these things

do

it's discovery it's research this sort

of stuff

really matters in your overall process

so

now i'll give you some other terms too

and you can choose to use these as you

see fit but

specialist specialist is another really

good one i looked at that just a second

ago and i saw email marketing

specialists i see

all different types of social media

specialist it's a good term for an

entry-level job

associate is another one assistant is

another one

but i want to get back to partnership

activation coordinator real quick okay

partnership activation coordinator i

interviewed chelsea zahn who is the

partnership activation coordinator for

the

pittsburgh steelers about a year ago

probably

and i talked to her about this and she

was like i didn't even know that was

when i was in college i had no idea what

a partnership activation coordinator was

and i laughed and i was like

i don't know what it is now so why don't

you explain it to me but my point in

this and bringing this

up is like unless you get out there and

see what those opportunities are in an

entry-level kind of form and fashion

you're never going to know what could

happen for you in the sports industry

you're never going to know what options

open up when you know about them

so you can go after something but what

i'd really like to have

you you get this focus and you lean in

deeper but what i'd really like to focus

on

is next level advice here's what i mean

always about actionable advice i want

you to do these searches i want you to

figure out those things and i want you

to put in the effort of looking through

them because again

i can't tell you what you should be

doing for your life i don't know what

you're interested in i don't know what

you're passionate about i don't know

what excites you

but if you start to put in the work and

you start to identify

an area that sounds interesting to you

oh man partnership activation sounds

really cool or marketing or operations

or whatever it may be

right you started to identify this area

sounds cool

now you need to go next level right you

got to raise your game and here's what i

mean

now go find 10 jobs in that

discipline so i'll use marketing as an

example just because it's probably

easier

right lots of marketing jobs out there

lots of sports marketing jobs but if you

say to yourself sports marketing sounds

super cool

i see this job for a marketing

coordinator i'm interested

this is what i want to lean into right

now this is what i think my focus may be

now go find 10 jobs 10

jobs across the country anywhere now

you're doing a search for

marketing coordinator go find 10 of them

every job you find is going to be a

little bit different because every

organization has a different

needs and demands of what they expect

out of a marketing coordinator but these

are entry-level jobs

now is where you're doing the next level

research go

through these 10 jobs that you pulled up

again you're not applying to them you're

looking at them and researching and

understanding what the market needs

get these 10 jobs okay read through the

job

descriptions and pull out the skills

that they're saying they want

one job may say i want somebody with

photoshop experience i want somebody

that knows crms i want somebody that has

done

email marketing and i want some of this

done blah blah blah whatever i'm just

throwing things out here right

another one says five other skills

another one says three different skills

line all these things up on a

spreadsheet

line up all the skills what you are now

identifying

are the handful of 15 to 20 skills

that are in demand for an entry-level

person

in sports marketing that is now your

game plan

identify those skills and in the next

column over on your spreadsheet

write down a number from one to ten of

where your comfort level is or one to

three i don't care make it up your own

system

right i do one to ten you might do one

to three whatever

your goal is to identify the gaps in

your knowledge that

don't line up with what the industry

needs the industry is telling you

if i'm hiring a marketing coordinator

right now no matter where i am in the

country these are the skills i want them

to have

it's an open book test they're telling

you the answers your job now is to say

okay

i've identified what i need i know

what's in demand

now i'm going to go get those skills and

make sure i have them some of you

you may already have but you want to

build that up so that by the time you

hit the marketplace

and you have determined you want to be

in marketing

you have the skills that will make you

stand out for jobs

so this is the two level technique start

out with wide

you know looking at those search terms

coordinator specialist associate

assistant start to narrow down your list

look through options out there

consider some things picture yourself in

them visualize what it would be like oh

i want to work on game night and stuff

okay maybe operations is a good match

for you

i really like being on the phone and i'm

relational and i'm reading this and

sales sounds really cool to me okay

oh i'm super creative i like to design i

like to build campaigns and i like to

push out these ideas

okay marketing right you start to read

more and these answers are going to

become very clear to you

once you identify then you have to

maximize

and that's where that study of what's in

demand for the marketplace comes in

understand what skills are in demand put

a plan together to learn them

and then when you hit the marketplace to

start applying for jobs you will be

a stand out applicant it really is that

simple and i'm telling you right now

because i speak in colleges

all across the country not enough people

are doing this

not enough people are being intentional

and learning in

this fashion and discovering themselves

and the marketplace they're taking their

courses they're doing their internships

they're checking the boxes and thinking

all right come to me now give me jobs it

doesn't work that way

it doesn't work that way you have to be

more active and more intentional

in this process and if you do these

steps

you will stand out in your sports career

and

i'm not even kidding this is the bottom

line this is how it's going to work for

you

so do that and then come back and tell

me in the comments

what you've discovered i want you to

share with me like wow i did this

research

and i started to really understand this

is the area that sounds interesting to

me

and i will gladly interact with you i

will gladly give you some advice i will

gladly tell you more about that career

path

but i want you to put in the work first

to understand a little bit more about

what works for you and then we can start

to have a more in-depth conversation

so subscribe to this channel get in

those comments and start telling us more

about what you're

discovering about yourself and your

career in the sports industry and the

ways you want to focus

and then let's start to have a

conversation but you got to put in the

work too it's not just me here