Erin Quinn, Caroline Steadman and Hillary London on making their way to ESPN

Erin Quinn, Caroline Steadman and in particular, Hillary London, are perfect examples of how life can take you places you wouldn’t expect to go.

Quinn and Steadman, recent college graduates, already hold positions with ESPN in one of the fastest growing fields at the worldwide leader in sports; the stats and analysis department.

London, who works in the stats and analysis department, took longer to nab her position at ESPN. She was an 11-year lacrosse coach before a friend referred her to the opening.

“I tell a lot of the people that I got the job because I’m a woman and I speak Spanish,” said London, who added that ESPN was looking to add females in the statistics and information department, which includes bottom line, production research, stats an analyst and the analytics team.

London, Steadman and Quinn spoke to Steve Fox’s Sports Journalism class on Wednesday morning. They primarily answered questions about how they reached ESPN and dished out advice for students applying for jobs or internships.

Quinn graduated from Smith College in 2009 with a major in economics. She worked as the sports editor of the school newspaper her freshman year, and didn’t know what field she wanted to go into, but knew it would be sports oriented.

She built her resume through internships with a minor league baseball team in her sophomore summer and also interned at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

A few months after graduating ESPN hired her as a stats analyst. Quinn described a lengthy interview process ESPN put her through, that included attending an info session, a phone assessment, an e-mail assessment, five or six more phone interviews and then a day on ESPN’s campus for interviews all day.

Steadman, an Amherst College graduate who also holds a degree in economics, went through the same interview process as Quinn did.

One of the most important things Steadman did was spend a summer in Costa Rica working on a literacy project. She eventually became fluent in Spanish.

This helps Steadman in her current position, because she can help translate blogs for ESPN Deportes, the Spanish version of ESPN.

“That was a pretty good selling point for our department,” said Steadman.

London hired Steadman and she reviews other applicants for positions in stats and analysis.

She stressed that the worst thing an applicant can put on their resume is that they are “passionate about sports.”

London argued that every applicant at ESPN has a passion for sports, and instead it’s important to sell yourself and explain why you want the job you’re applying for.

“Make sure that you’re putting across the reason why you want that job, it’s not just about passion,” said London. “If there’s one thing to take away from this, take that.”

For an aspiring journalist like myself, it was reassuring to hear that opportunities for young people like Quinn and Steadman are still available. You always hear how difficult it is to break into the sports field, but knowing that they already hold solid position at the mecca of sports journalism made me more optimistic about my own future.