This transcript has been lightly edited by AI
Sean Callanan: And advice for people who say, “Hey, I want to get into sports.” Sports is exciting, but spoiler alert – there's a lot of hard work and non-glamorous parts of the job. It's great working with a massive brand and a team and experiencing all the excitement and the highs and lows of the regular season.
What's your advice for young graduates or people wanting to get into the world of sports?
Nilay Shah: Yeah, we talked a little bit about my story growing up. I was completely lucky. I didn't have LinkedIn to reach out to people. I didn't have TikTok or Instagram to create content myself and create my own portfolio.
Like our portfolios were just resumes. I think you need to have a resume, but if you're applying to work in social media, you can say, “Hey, take a look at my TikTok, take a look at my Instagram.” I can create content and I don't need thousands of dollars worth of software to prove that I'm a great storyteller.
And to me, if people reach out to me on LinkedIn, I do my best to give them an opportunity to set up a few minutes to talk and give career advice because I didn't have that. I got extremely lucky. I couldn't randomly email somebody or send a LinkedIn message for the opportunity to talk.
So take advantage of how technology has certainly upgraded from 15 years ago when I was in a similar position.
Sean Callanan: Yeah definitely. And I think there is the pinnacle, like working in the NFL, which is the big leagues. But there's so many different leagues and teams all the way down from grassroots.
To high school, to college. There's so many ways that you can get your reps and test it out. And that's the thing – we are going to see this next generation of completely digital native, really innovative social creators. Like someone that says, “Hey, I'm a TikTok producer.”
Like they have a complete, unique skill set. So I think there's some real opportunities there. I think we'll see more teams getting people that are native for the platform that know how to leverage it. But also if someone says, “Hey, you want to show your work?”
There are so many opportunities in a volunteer capacity, supporting your grassroots or a high school. There are a lot of other sports where, when you look at the generations, not everyone is like yourself interning and being at the NFL for a long time – they've bounced from different roles in different sports and been able to level up.
So there's definitely different opportunities there, but if you're going to be in that digital space, get on the tools and play around with it and see what people are doing.
Nilay Shah: And it's easy to get noticed. Back then I was just one of many fish, but here if you do good stuff, there is that opportunity that you can instantly turn viral and turn it into a career.
So if you're not making it, you got no chance, right? So you gotta go out there if that's what you want to do. You gotta create, create, create, network.
And then again, like we talked, it's also luck. You gotta be right place, right time, and fortunately for me, that happened for me, but you know, you gotta keep your head down and just go to work.
