On April 14, the Division of University Advancement held its final “30-Minute Mentors” session, which featured 2019 Rowan graduate Skyler Pino. The focus of these events is for current students to hear from alumni about who they are, their experience at Rowan and their advice on navigating life after college.
Pino graduated from the Ric Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts with her B.A. in public relations and minors in advertising and marketing. From 2017-2018, Pino was captain of the women’s field hockey team, a member of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) and the Outstanding Women Leadership Group (OWL), and she held an internship with the Philadelphia Phillies, where she is now a full-time sales associate for the company.
Pino got her start in the sports world as a ball girl for the Phillies during the 2016-2017 season. She was able to gain experience by helping the team how ever she could, whether it was working the games or serving as an ambassador outside of the field.
“We went to different events. We went to softball tournaments, and just really did whatever they needed to do when the players weren’t there,” Pino said.
During her junior year, Pino searched for internships to get her foot in the door. She became a Phillies Ticket Representative Intern, which was an opportunity that all college students can receive within the Phillies program.
“You work in ticket sales — selling individual tickets, being customer service support over the phone. You work a lot of special events in other departments, and assist other departments with duties like community outreach, public relations and marketing,” Pino said.
After she graduated in 2019, Pino was offered a full-time job by the Phillies organization with their merchandise department.
“I stayed there for the entire 2019 season doing all their inventory for everything that was purchased in store or online, and I would help retrieve all of the game-used items, such as baseballs, bats and bases, and help put them out to some of our sellers and distribute them,” Pino said.
After the 2019 season ended, Pino became a full-time Phillies sales associate, which requires her to work with Phillies season and group clients, specialize in selling season/group packages, represent the organization at exhibits, conferences and meetings and perform game-day duties.
During her presentation, Pino shared her best tips and tools for working in the sports industry. The first and most important one was to connect with others on LinkedIn.
“Anyone you think you know or anyone you’re interested in — whether they work in major league sports or minor leagues or even college athletics — reach out to them, say your interests, say some type of skills you get and also create an account for the website Teamwork Online,” Pino said. “They post a lot of great job opportunities for teams in MLB, NBA, MLS, NFL, as well as minor league and college athletics, so that’s a great tool to use. A lot of teams use it. I think every team in every major sport uses this to post their jobs online.”
Another useful tip is searching other teams’ websites for potential internships and open job positions. Pino shared that teams post events where they host groups of college students, such as the Phillies College Nights. During the regular season, students can sign up to receive a personal tour of the ballpark and listen to guest speakers from different departments in the media room. At the end of this session, students can hand in their resumes for staff to look over if any positions become available. Sports organization members are on hand during these events to answer any questions about what it is that they do in their roles.
Pino’s final words of advice were to start small. Whether you begin as a 50-50 ticket seller at games or help with sports related events, no opportunity should go ignored.
“No internship, no job is ever too small to get where you are,” Pino said. “If you start in that college athletic world or minor league team or any type of smaller team, it’s really great to get that experience.”
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