Landing my first job and breaking into the sports industry

How I networked my way into the sports industry with zero connections — the 3P framework: Pipeline, Persistence, Passion.

I was in my final year at undergrad, at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi. SRCC was one of the top undergrad universities in India for the commerce field and attracted great recruiters including banks, audit and consulting firms.

While I had secured a few good on-campus job offers, the disappointed from not being selected by the A-tier firms made me a bit of a rebel. I wondered if any of these boring 'desk jobs' were worth it; why anyone would work 50-60 hours a week on jobs or industries they weren't interested in. Moreover, I had learned from seniors that the first few years out, the kind of work they were doing was also very average - very mechanical work with little or no client interaction at all. So, I was stubborn that I didn't want to be just one of the 1000's working in these organizations, doing work I didn't care for.

I had always been passionate about sports and even played a number of them growing up. I had also been fascinated with what happened 'behind the scenes' at sporting events. The logistics of organizing large events, the way events attracted large sponsors and the business of getting a sporting event on TV/ media were things that actually kept me up at night. I had played many sporting events growing up and even attended few big ones as a fan. I had attended Cricket matches including the Indian Premier League (IPL) which was in its nascent stages, ATP tennis events, where I had even volunteered once. All these events had a lot of people working for them behind the scenes and I was super excited to learn more about what these people did and how it was 'work' when you were actually a part of these great sporting events and among athletes that you admired.

So - the rebel in me wanted to give up all my on-campus job offers and work in sports. Mind you the offers I got were from some big names - Google, HSBC, S&P Capital IQ etc. When I told people I wanted to work in sports, it was met with shrugs and some called me silly, saying I had to be pragmatic and shouldn't just chose a field because I was passionate about it. Would these sports organizations even pay, What was the future, I was often asked. To be honest, I didn't really have an answer. I just knew that if I enjoyed doing something, I would be good at it and if I was good at my work, more doors would open and I backed myself to take these opportunities.

There was no structured recruiting into the sports industry. They did not have campus recruiting and most of the organizations did not even have a formal HR and job posts. It was all networking and referrals. I needed to break into an industry where I knew nobody; none of my seniors from SRCC worked in sports too. Seemed an uphill battle. My only strategy was to reach out to as many people as possible. Maybe I am not giving myself enough credit, my strategy was as follows (3P's)

Pipeline: Reach out to as many people as possible and build a huge pipeline. On average I wrote to 10-15 people a day on LinkedIn for 30 days in a row. I actually had an excel of 400 names on it. These were all professionals in the industry who worked for a variety of organizations - teams/ franchisees of the different leagues; agencies - from the tiniest 3 person organization to giants like IMG; sports media organizations and federations/ leagues. I covered the entire gamut of industry.

Persistence: Just writing to them once isn't enough. You need to relentlessly follow up; follow up to an extent where you 'almost' become annoying. I say almost here because there is a fine line and I'm sure I crossed it many a time but I tried to be professional at all time and requested for a quick call, some advice etc. I would even share an interesting article I read or share something that was happening globally and ask them how it could be replicated in India.

Passion: Lastly, passion. I needed to show people that I was really passionate about the industry and their organization. Passion doesn't mean just following sport and knowing results of matches. I had to research every last bit about the organization, speak their language and ask intelligent questions. When I got the opportunity to speak to them, I did speak from the heart about my interest but it wouldn't have had the same impact had I not prepared well.

So, eventually, I heard back from around 40 of the 400 people I had written to. Only half of them agreed to get on a call with me. The others told me not to waste their time or that they were only interested in hiring experienced professionals. Out of the 20, 5 agreed to meet me in person. Some of them gave me valuable advice and few connected me to more people. I ended up interviewing for 3 roles and landed them all. Not fancy, high paying jobs but an opportunity to get a foot in the door in this industry.

My major point from the above is the conversion ratio, had I not done any of the above P's, I would've failed. I needed that pipeline of 400 people and I wouldn't have heard back had I not been persistent enough and lastly, if I didn't have the passion for this, it would've shown and I would've failed the interviews.

Also, you do not stop once you get a job. There is no downside to meeting more people and learning something new from them. I continued reaching out to people (maybe not at the same rate) and can safely say, I made some great relationships in the industry. I even got my subsequent job interviews through these connections/ relationships I had built. Till date, I continue to be in touch with a lot of the people I had reached out to in my early days. Some remain mentors and many great friends!

So - was this process easy! No, it wasn't! Nothing good ever is easy. For days, I wouldn't get a response but I had to keep at it. Keeping at it is the ONLY way you get things done and this was a lesson I'm glad I learned early and was so transferable to many things I ended up doing.