Job Q&A
by Michele Marrinan
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Completing an internship with the US Olympic Committee's media and public affairs division during his senior year at Northwest Missouri State University, Nick Inzerello decided to combine his love of sports with his degree in public relations. After a two-month stint covering the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, the 24-year-old is back in Colorado Springs promoting athletes online at USOlympicteam.com.

Monster.com: How was it to be so intimately involved in the Olympics?

Nick Inzerello: It was an experience of a lifetime. To be able to go to Sydney, and cover the Olympics from a content-producing standpoint was great. I was able to cover every event from the human-interest side, giving the reader an idea of who the athlete is and a behind-the-scenes look at what an Olympic athlete goes through.

During the games, I went to the events and covered them as a journalist would. We would send our stories to our IT division back in Colorado, and we would also work with NBC to coordinate athlete chats.

Mc: What was the most incredible part of covering the Olympics?

NI: The people you meet are tremendous. Seeing the US baseball team win the gold medal was fantastic. The Olympic movement is such a great feeling; you learn what true sport is. It's not about money, and it's not all about gold medals. It's about competing against people all around the world, and helping our US athletes to become the best that they can. To play a part in that is amazing.

Mc: How did you end up working for the US Olympic Committee (USOC)?

NI: I did a six-month internship with the site and enjoyed it. I was very fortunate;

I got the internship through school. Sports was always something I loved. I was an athlete, and it was something that I wanted to continue.

After finishing school, I came back to the USOC and worked for four months in the same division as a public relations specialist, looking for full-time jobs while I was doing that. Then I went to Buffalo, New York, where I worked with the Buffalo Bills for a year. After the last game last year, I got a call from the USOC's Broadcast Entertainment Properties, the division where USOlympicTeam.com is.

Mc: Did you know much about the Internet?

NI: No, I really didn't. Until the USOC proposed it to me, I never really thought about working on the Internet. But I knew that if I could get a good feel for the marketing end of it and learn some of the technical aspects of design and HTML, it would be very helpful. I learned basic HTML coding on the run, and as I got better, I could do more things. It was very helpful.

Mc: What are your duties?

NI: When I started, I was helping to facilitate USOlympicteam.com, changing things around, running HTML and working as probably the main content provider at the time, before we increased our staff a little bit. Each sport has its own PR or media contact, someone who writes the feature stories on each athlete within the respective sport. So I help put those stories up.

Mc: How is your job changing as Olympics fever quiets down?

NI: We're restructuring a lot of things with this position, because we've made adjustments to our staffing. I'll still continue to be a content provider for athletes on site. There are roughly 200 resident athletes that we'd still like to promote on our site and in their hometown newspapers. We have so many different programs coming into the US Olympic committee that we try to publicize on our site. So we would help cover that and promote that.

Mc: What would you tell someone interested in online sports?

NI: First of all, you have to have a love of sports. The best way to go about job hunting is to focus on what you want to do and what your talents are. If you like talking to people and writing about things, then maybe you can get a job doing what I do. You've got to be persistent in the sports field. People say there aren't jobs in sports, but there are.