What Sports Media Employers Actually Look For in Candidates: Insight From the Other Side of the Hiring Table
After years of conducting interviews with candidates and making hiring decisions, the same themes emerge time and time again.
The application that stopped me mid-scroll arrived on a Wednesday afternoon. Three hundred words. A specific reference to a piece we had published six weeks earlier, an explanation of what worked about it, and a clear argument for how this person would approach something we had not yet covered.
No generic enthusiasm. No mention of a childhood love of sport. A cover letter that read like it had been written for us and only us.
We had almost 75 applications for that role. I read that one twice. The candidate got the interview.
I’m sharing this not because it’s exceptional but because it was rare enough that it stood out immediately. After years of hiring across sports media — commissioning freelancers, taking on junior journalists, building content teams — the gap between what candidates think employers are looking for and what employers are actually looking for remains one of the most consistent features of the hiring process.
This article is an attempt to close that gap.
The Search Happens Before the Interview
The first thing I do with almost every application I receive is search the candidate’s name. Not as a background check. As a shortcut to understanding what they are actually capable of.
What I look for is work. Published pieces, a showreel, a portfolio site, a social account with consistent output. Something that answers the question “can this person do the job” before I commit time to reading the full application. When I find it, the application goes into a different pile. When I find nothing, the application has to work considerably harder to stay alive.
The candidate with no digital footprint is not a blank slate. They are an unanswered question. In a hiring process where a corporate job opening now receives an average of 250 applications (according to Glassdoor’s most recent data), most busy editors and hiring managers won’t resolve that question for you. They’ll move to the next application.
What “findable work” means in practice varies by discipline. For a journalist it’s published clips — anywhere, any platform. For a broadcaster it’s a showreel or an audio reel. For a social media candidate it’s a demonstrably active account or a portfolio of managed accounts with visible results. For a PR candidate it’s evidence of campaigns, placements, or communications work, however small the scale.
The platform matters far less than candidates assume. A well-written, original Substack piece with 100 readers tells me more about a candidate’s journalism ability than bylines in a major publication churning out the same stories found on numerous websites.
The point is: I’m not making hiring decisions on the basis of what candidates say they can do. I’m making them on the basis of what they’ve already done. Build the evidence before you need it.
What “Potential” Actually Means to a Hiring Manager
When hiring managers say they’re looking for someone with potential, candidates often assume this means enthusiasm, energy, or attitude. It means something more specific.
Potential is visible in the way someone has already been doing the job before being paid to do it. The aspiring journalist who’s been publishing consistently, whether or not anyone is paying them for it. The aspiring broadcaster who’s been recording, however small the audience. The social media candidate who’s been running their own account and can point to what happened when they did.
The pattern I notice repeatedly across years of hiring is this (especially today): the candidates who stand out almost always start something independently. A newsletter. A podcast. A sports account. A YouTube channel. Not because independent projects are inherently impressive, but because they demonstrate the internal drive that makes someone coachable and developable rather than someone who needs external permission to begin.
The candidate who’s been creating on their own terms tells me, without saying a single word about it, that they will not be waiting to be told what to do when they get into the building.
One hire I made early in my editorial career came down to this directly. Two candidates with comparable formal credentials, comparable interviews. One had spent the previous eight months running an independent sports newsletter covering a niche no major outlet was touching. Modest subscriber numbers, clean writing, consistent output, clearly improving across the period. The other had the better CV and more impressive institutional affiliations. I hired the newsletter writer. Eighteen months later they were one of the strongest performers on the team.
The reverse of this is worth stating directly. “I’m really passionate about sports media” is the single most useless sentence in any sports media application.
Passion is not a differentiator — everyone applying for these roles is passionate, or claims to be. What differentiates candidates is demonstrated capability. Evidence beats assertion every time.
The Application Mistakes That End Candidacies Immediately
These are not hypothetical errors. They are things I see repeatedly.
The generic cover letter
The ones that open with “I’ve always had a passion for sports and media” and proceed to say nothing specific about the outlet, the role, or why this particular candidate for this particular role makes any sense.
These letters signal one thing clearly: the candidate did’nt find us interesting enough to research. If you cannot be bothered to find out what we actually cover, I can’t be bothered to find out what you can actually do.
The incomplete portfolio
The portfolio that exists but contains one piece from two years ago and nothing since. Or the portfolio with a broken link. Both carry the same message: either carelessness or stagnation. Neither is the impression a candidate wants to make. Check every link in every application before it goes out. Every single time.
The wrong application entirely
Applications for roles where the candidate clearly has not read the job description — wrong discipline, wrong seniority level, wrong market. In a hiring environment where the average job posting attracts 250 applications, this is a category error that ends the candidacy immediately and suggests poor judgement more broadly.
This may sound made-up but I swear it’s true: at a previous company I worked for, we were advertising for a junior editor. Among the 50 or so applications were a taxi driver, a chef, and an electrician! Now, if any of these also ran a blog, a podcast, or active social media channels demonstrating their sports media abilities, they may have been considered. But they didn’t. So they weren’t.
The contradictory social media presence
This is not about controversial opinions. It’s about accounts that are either completely dormant (no presence, which in 2026 raises a genuine question about digital literacy for media roles) or chaotic in a way that contradicts the professional image the candidate is presenting in their application. If your public social presence is inconsistent with the role you are applying for, a hiring manager will notice.
The positive flip: the cover letter that demonstrated genuine knowledge of our work. One candidate, applying for a junior editorial role, referenced a specific feature we had published three months earlier, explained what they thought worked about the structure, and described how they would have approached one section differently. One paragraph. Took maybe 20 minutes of genuine engagement with our work to write. It got them the interview in a hiring round where 90 percent of cover letters were discarded in under thirty seconds.
The Interview Room: What Separates the Candidates Who Get Offers
Most candidates prepare answers. The ones who get hired prepare questions.
The moment in an interview when my assessment shifts from “evaluating this person” to “wanting this person on the team” is almost always when the candidate demonstrated they had thought seriously about the role, the organisation, and the challenges involved — not just about why they wanted the job.
The candidates who ask about our editorial challenges rather than our editorial achievements. The ones who show commercial and industry awareness rather than fandom. The ones who make me feel, in the space of a conversation, that they’ve already thought harder about our problems than I expect them to.
Candidates who bring something to show — a piece of relevant work, a story idea, a short proposal — are rare enough that they stand out every time. The bar to clear here is genuinely low. Almost nobody does it. The ones who do signal immediately that they’ve thought about what they can contribute rather than just what they can receive.
The candidates who struggle are almost always the ones who clearly rehearse answers to standard questions but can’t respond naturally when the conversation moves somewhere unexpected. Sports media moves fast and requires adaptability. The interview is a direct test of that quality.
When I asked a candidate what they would have done differently about a piece of coverage we’d recently published, the ones who answered genuinely — including when they disagreed with our approach — were far more interesting than the ones who offered polished non-answers.
Being honest about gaps in experience is consistently more impressive than trying to cover them. Every hiring manager knows that an early-career candidate will have gaps. The candidate who says “I don’t have direct experience in X, but here is specifically what I have been doing to address that” is telling me something real about how they operate under pressure.
The candidate who tries to paper over the gap with vague enthusiasm is wasting both of our time.
The Things Nobody Tells You
Timing matters more than candidates realise. Data confirms that the first 50 applicants to any role receive disproportionate attention.
Separate research from CareerHelp finds that applications submitted within 48 hours of a posting going live perform significantly better than those submitted later in the week when the hiring manager already has a mental shortlist forming. This is not a minor edge, it’s a meaningful difference in whether your application gets read at all.
References are taken more seriously in sports media than in most industries, because it’s a genuinely small world where most senior people either know your referee or know someone who does. Choose references who know your work specifically, brief them on the role you’re applying for, and give them the context to speak to the most relevant aspects of your experience. A reference who’s caught off guard by a call, or who can only speak in generalities, is not helping you.
The follow-up after an interview is noticed far more often than candidates assume. Not a lengthy email — a single specific line thanking the interviewer and referencing something concrete from the conversation. Something that could only have been written by someone who was in that specific room, not a template sent to every post-interview inbox. Almost nobody does this. The candidates who do are remembered in the follow-up conversations between interviewers that most candidates never know are happening.
Those conversations happen faster than the formal process suggests. The discussion in the corridor after the panel ends, the quick message between two editors comparing notes — the formal offer is often confirming a decision that was made informally earlier. First impressions carry disproportionate weight for exactly this reason. The way you walk into the building and the first thirty seconds of how you present yourself are contributing to an assessment that is often largely formed before you have answered a single prepared question.
Sports Social Media and Digital Content: The Fastest Growing Sector
Social media management, content creation, community management, digital strategy, short-form video, newsletter production.
This is where the most entry-level hiring is happening right now. Every sports organisation at every level needs digital content. Most are under-resourced. A content creator who can demonstrate results — growth figures, engagement rates, consistent output — is one of the most in-demand profiles in the current market.
The challenge for someone starting out is demonstrating results without existing clients. The solution is running your own sports platform first. A social account, a newsletter, a YouTube channel — built consistently over a few months — becomes the live demonstration of skills that no job application can substitute for.
When I was hiring social media roles, I was not looking for qualifications. I was looking for someone who had already been doing it. Show me a sports account you built from nothing and I will have seen everything I need.
Three actions this week:
- Start a sport-specific social account or newsletter this week and commit to a consistent posting schedule for one month.
- Approach one local sports organisation with a specific, limited proposal: ten posts per week for one month, in exchange for a testimonial and a case study you can show future clients.
- Build a one-page document showing content output, growth, and engagement from any platform you already manage, however small.
Sports PR and Communications: The Career Changer’s Best Route In
Media relations, press releases, crisis communications, event management, spokesperson coaching, content strategy.
The sports PR sector is one of the least discussed entry points for people coming into sports media and one of the most viable — particularly for career changers who arrive with communications experience from other industries. Every sports organisation needs communications support. Most do not have enough of it.
The challenge is building a sports-specific portfolio without existing sports clients. Voluntary work solves this directly. Offering media relations support to a local club or sports event gives you the experience, the reference, and the right to claim the work as part of your track record.
Governing bodies of smaller sports are particularly worth targeting. They advertise entry-level communications roles regularly, they are consistently overlooked by candidates who focus only on clubs and broadcasters, and the work they need is genuinely varied and instructive.
Three actions this week:
- Identify three sports organisations that look under-resourced from a communications perspective and approach each with a specific proposal.
- Write a sample press release for a real local sports event and add it to your portfolio as a speculative piece.
- Search the jobs pages of three sports governing bodies in your country this week. Most post roles that receive a fraction of the applicants that club and broadcaster roles receive.
Sports Data Journalism: The Specialist Niche With the Lowest Barrier to Entry
Data-driven sports reporting, statistical analysis, visualisation, performance analytics content.
This is the fastest-growing specialist niche in sports journalism and the one with the most genuine space for new voices. The barrier to entry is lower than it appears. Basic data literacy combined with sports knowledge and the ability to write clearly is sufficient to start building a public profile.
The entry point is your own platform. Publish data-driven sports analysis using publicly available statistics, build a track record of clear and insightful work, and the specialist niche does the positioning work for you.
Two actions this week:
- Learn one data tool this month. Tableau Public is free and used across the industry.
- Publish one data-driven sports analysis piece using publicly available statistics and add it to your portfolio this week.
The One Thing That Accelerates Everything
Every person I hired as an editor had one thing in common. They had already been doing the job before anyone paid them to do it. The portfolio proved the ability. The ability got the job.
The fastest route into sports media is not the best application. It’s the best body of work. The people who are waiting for the right opportunity before they start creating are waiting for something that rarely comes. The people who start creating before the opportunity exists are the ones who end up creating the opportunity.
Stop waiting for permission. Start building the evidence that makes permission irrelevant.
