Job Summary
Sports Reference LLC plans to welcome seven interns for summer 2022 as valued contributors to our Data, Marketing, and Engineering teams. Sports Reference currently serves a still-growing 17.5m monthly users through our Reference sites and our SaaS business line at Stathead.com.
Our sites are used worldwide every day by professionals and non-professionals alike. They are: Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Hockey-Reference.com, SR/College Football, SR/College Basketball, FBref.com, and Stathead.com.
Sports Reference is a relatively small company of only 27 employees. As such, interns’ work will be highly visible and have a definite and immediate impact. In addition to the projects interns will complete as members of their respective teams, interns will also participate in skill-building, career-development, and networking opportunities designed to help interns achieve their career goals. Former Sports Reference interns have gone on to a wide array of meaningful careers, including a number of front office positions. (Congrats to our 2012 Intern Ben Zauzmer for recently being promoted to Mets Assistant GM!)
To Apply
Please visit our jobs website at https://sports-reference-llc.breezy.hr/ to submit your resume for this position. In addition to a resume, you are required to submit your response to one of four prompts. Please submit your response to your chosen prompt as a "Cover Letter". You do not need to submit a traditional cover letter. More information on the prompts is included below.
We will start to review applications on February 7th and will begin phone interviews the week of February 14th. We have provided a general outline of our interview process here: https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html Please note that we do not host full interviews for internship candidates.
Our Purpose and Values
We will be the trusted source of information and tools that inspire and empower users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love.
We value:
- Respect for our users, the athletes we cover, and our team;
- Reliable tools and services that meet our users' needs every day;
- Craftsmanship in building tools and products; and
- Data democratization. We publish many data sets for emerging and underserved sports. For instance, the New York Times covered our recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues in the summer of 2021.
To meet these expectations, we encourage team members to participate in company discussions and share new ideas, features or potential solutions to problems.
Background
We take great pride in the Sports Reference Summer Internship program. Each year, we incorporate feedback from the previous year to ensure we are providing a valuable and relevant experience. In 2022, we will provide:
- Meaningful project assignments that advance our company purpose;
- Weekly programming, which last year included
- Technical-skill seminars led by experienced members of our team,
- Professional development activities led by a trained Job Search Coach,
- Networking opportunities with professionals in the sports industry, and
- Industry-relevant presentations with Sean Forman, President of Sports Reference;
- Opportunities to bond with fellow interns; and
- Access to all team members and the ability to participate in company discussions via Slack.
Our program is designed with undergraduate students in mind, but we welcome all applications. If you are interested in a Sports Reference Summer Internship and are more experienced, please take into consideration that we do not alter the pay or structure of our internship program to accommodate more advanced skill sets.
Positions
Sports Reference plans to welcome seven interns for summer 2022:
- Three Data Interns, one of whom will focus exclusively on building our Women’s College Basketball site
- Goals: Complete data management projects that help us fulfill our purpose to be the trusted source of information and tools that inspire and empower our users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love. A highly qualified candidate will have basic knowledge of relational databases.
- One Social Media Intern
- Goals: Actively contribute to social media planning and content creation to help Sports Reference cultivate community and be the trusted source of information and tools that inspire and empower our users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love. A highly qualified candidate will have experience managing social media accounts.
- One Digital Marketing Intern
- Goals: Complete digital marketing projects that help us fulfill our purpose to be the trusted source of information and tools that inspire and empower our users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love. A highly qualified candidate will have experience working on email and digital marketing campaigns.
- Two Engineering Interns
- Goals: Complete development projects that help us fulfill our purpose to be the trusted source of information and tools that inspire and empower our users to enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love. Candidates should feel comfortable writing code in any language (you'll hit the ground running if you know Perl). A highly qualified candidate will have basic knowledge of relational databases and web development.
Applicants may apply to only one position. Any applicants who apply to more than one of the positions will not be considered.
Qualifications and Skills
A qualified candidate's application will demonstrate:
- Evidence that you are capable of meeting the goals listed above, beneath the relevant position;
- Ability to lead a project after given basic directions;
- Desire to find correct answers, even when difficult to do so;
- Tremendous attention to detail; and
- A history of getting things done (and done well).
Expectations
- Complete assigned projects as time and skills allow
- Continue your ongoing learning and professional development
Salary
Sports Reference 2022 Summer Interns will be paid at a rate of $20/hour.
Sports Reference 2022 Summer Interns are expected to work 40 hr/week for at least nine weeks between May 31st and September 2nd. We offer some flexibility for start/end date and vacation time. We generally work a standard workday, though we offer the ability to flex hours to accommodate non-work obligations.
Other Information
- Sports Reference's first site was launched in 2000. We have bootstrapped ourselves to 27 full-time employees and have no venture capital backing.
- Sports Reference is a remote-first company. Sports Reference is located in Philadelphia and non-Philadelphia candidates will be considered on an equal footing to those who are local. Presently, all Sports Reference employees are working remotely at least some of the time. We have re-opened our office, but well over half of our team is full-time remote and those in Philly are in the office on days of their choosing.
- Applicants are preferred to have a legal right to work in the United States. Please let us know in your application if you do not have the right to work in the United States. We'd have to look carefully at those cases as we have never hired a non-US-based intern.
- We are willing to provide accommodations for candidates for whom the timing or structure of our interview process may be challenging. This may include early morning or evening interview times or provide payment to cover child care expenses if needed. If you are applying for a role where verbal communication is not a significant requirement, we may consider an alternative form of interview as is reasonably possible and suitable. Similarly if an extended period of internet connectivity is a challenge, we may consider an alternate form of interview. If we invite you to interview, please let us know of any possibly necessary accommodations.
- Our typical interview process is described at https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html
- Employment at Sports Reference LLC is at-will and this position is an at-will appointment.
- We are a corporate sponsor of Women in Sports and Tech.
- 100% of our merchandise sales support youth sports.
Application Prompts
For ALL applicants, the first half of the prompt is to answer the following question:
Why do you want to intern with Sports Reference, and why should we hire you? (200 word max)
The second half of the prompt is related to the specific position for which you are applying. Applicants may apply to only one position. Find the prompt for the position in which you are most interested below.
-
Data Intern Prompt
(In addition to the question required to be answered by all applicants, above)
Step by step, how would you tackle the following project? (This is an actual project interns have worked on in the past. You should not actually complete the project.)
As soon as NBA teams make their draft selections, we want to input new entries into our database for the drafted players. In order to do so, we will need to know their biographical information (birthdates, schools attended, name pronunciation, shooting hand, Twitter handle, etc.) so that the bio section at the top of their new player pages will be as complete as possible. You have 1-2 weeks before the draft to research and prepare for draft night.
(Optional - If you're interested in helping us build our women's college basketball site, please answer this question in addition to the NBA draft question): One of the three Data Interns we plan to welcome this summer will focus exclusively on building our Women’s College Basketball site. To be frank, based on past experiences of launching new sites, we anticipate much of the work will be tedious (e.g., entering scanned boxscores into the database). That said, the intern hired for this position will serve a critical role in launching a new site and expanding access to women’s college basketball data. If you are interested in taking on this responsibility, specifically, please answer the following question as part of your response to this prompt:
Why do you want to build our Women’s College Basketball site? Why do you think it’s important that we cover Women’s College Basketball? (200 word max)
-
Social Media Internship Prompt
(In addition to the question required to be answered by all applicants, above)
Step by step, how would you tackle the following project? You do not need to complete the project, we simply want to understand how you would approach it.
Our social media team is considering launching and building up a TikTok account for our Baseball Reference website/brand. Sports content on TikTok is at an all time high with creators all over the world posting content each day. Currently, #sports on TikTok has almost 70 billion views.
Please explain how you would approach researching and strategizing how Baseball Reference can quickly launch and grow a TikTok account and become a leader on sports/baseball TikTok.
-
Digital Marketing Internship Prompt
(In addition to the question required to be answered by all applicants, above)
Step by step, how would you tackle the following project? You do not need to complete the project, we simply want to understand how you would approach it.
Our marketing team plans to leverage the promotion and media coverage around the 2022 World Cup tournament to promote our FBref.com soccer website, build out social media following and build a loyal, international audience. One impactful strategy that we have seen success with in the past is creating relationships with media, podcasters and other “influencers” to promote our database and showcase how our data will help them and their audiences dive deeper into soccer stats.
Please explain the steps you would take to find relevant US based and international “influencers” and connect with them to promote our FBref.com website.
-
Engineering Internship Prompt
(In addition to the question required to be answered by all applicants, above)
Please provide us with a coding solution to the following problem. You can use any high-level language that you’d like. This problem shouldn’t take more than an hour to complete. If you are finding yourself spending more time, your solution is probably too elaborate. Submit a link to the location where we can view the code (e.g., github). The solution should contain a README.md that provides an explanation to your solution.
Given a json file that includes each team's Win-Loss records versus opponents, provide a code sample of how you would build a table displaying a matrix of head-to-head records, similar to this table. We are interested in your ability to work with data structures, loops and logic.
Provided json data (Note: The json data provided is just to give a visualization of the data format. The actual values are unimportant for this exercise and shouldn't need to be included in the code.):
{
"BRO": {
"BSN": { "W": 10, "L": 12 },
"CHC": { "W": 15, "L": 7 },
"CIN": { "W": 15, "L": 7 },
"NYG": { "W": 14, "L": 8 },
"PHI": { "W": 14, "L": 8 },
"PIT": { "W": 15, "L": 7 },
"STL": { "W": 11, "L": 11 }
},
"BSN": {
"BRO": { "W": 12, "L": 10 },
"CHC": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"CIN": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"NYG": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"PHI": { "W": 14, "L": 8 },
"PIT": { "W": 12, "L": 10 },
"STL": { "W": 9, "L": 13 }
},
"CHC": {
"BRO": { "W": 7, "L": 15 },
"BSN": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"CIN": { "W": 12, "L": 10 },
"NYG": { "W": 7, "L": 15 },
"PHI": { "W": 16, "L": 6 },
"PIT": { "W": 8, "L": 14 },
"STL": { "W": 10, "L": 12 }
},
"CIN": {
"BRO": { "W": 7, "L": 15 },
"BSN": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"CHC": { "W": 10, "L": 12 },
"NYG": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"PHI": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"PIT": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"STL": { "W": 8, "L": 14 }
},
"NYG": {
"BRO": { "W": 8, "L": 14 },
"BSN": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"CHC": { "W": 15, "L": 7 },
"CIN": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"PHI": { "W": 12, "L": 10 },
"PIT": { "W": 15, "L": 7 },
"STL": { "W": 13, "L": 9 }
},
"PHI": {
"BRO": { "W": 8, "L": 14 },
"BSN": { "W": 8, "L": 14 },
"CHC": { "W": 6, "L": 16 },
"CIN": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"NYG": { "W": 10, "L": 12 },
"PIT": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"STL": { "W": 8, "L": 14 }
},
"PIT": {
"BRO": { "W": 7, "L": 15 },
"BSN": { "W": 10, "L": 12 },
"CHC": { "W": 14, "L": 8 },
"CIN": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"NYG": { "W": 7, "L": 15 },
"PHI": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"STL": { "W": 6, "L": 16 }
},
"STL": {
"BRO": { "W": 11, "L": 11 },
"BSN": { "W": 13, "L": 9 },
"CHC": { "W": 12, "L": 10 },
"CIN": { "W": 14, "L": 8 },
"NYG": { "W": 9, "L": 13 },
"PHI": { "W": 14, "L": 8 },
"PIT": { "W": 16, "L": 6 }
}
}
Results should look like:
Sports Reference LLC does not discriminate in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, military service eligibility, veteran status, marital status, disability, membership in any other protected classes, or on the basis of sports franchise preferences.