Cover Letter to Social Signal

Ok, it’s away! I just sent my cover letter and resume off to Social Signal and I’m now crossing my fingers, toes, and eyes! Below is my cover letter (and I’ll put my resume online again soon as well). Hopefully it peaks their interest and does the trick in landing me the job (or least an…

Ok, it’s away! I just sent my cover letter and resume off to Social Signal and I’m now crossing my fingers, toes, and eyes! Below is my cover letter (and I’ll put my resume online again soon as well). Hopefully it peaks their interest and does the trick in landing me the job (or least an interview to talk to them).

BTW I ended up not using my revised accomplishments that I was working on because I really wanted to get this out the door to them. I will still be working on this accomplishments list in the future though because I think it will give my resume much more of an impact in terms of my experience and abilities.

—-

Rob & Alexandra,

When I noticed your job posting on Craigslist for a progressive geek / office administrator and then proceeded to your company website to read about your company, I nearly fell out of my chair. Your description of "collaborative communities" sounded exactly like my research on what I call "connected communities". As your job posting indicates, I felt this could be my dream job, as I’ve been looking for a job like this that will not only utilize my diverse set of skills and experience but more importantly match my personal culture and ethics of working for a company that is trying to change the world and make it a better place. I believe that Social Signals is exactly the type of company I’ve been looking for and both of you are exactly the type of caring conscious people for whom I’d love to work.

As for my knowledge and experience, I actually have done a lot of government work in the past (more even than my résumé shows) but over the past ten years I’ve actually done more work related to online community building within the computer gaming scene, both professionally for large companies as well as voluntarily for the gaming fan communities that surround these company’s products. It is within these communities, however, that I discovered the importance of culture which pushed my interests outside of just the computer gaming scene to look at cultures elsewhere, with the World Wide Web being one cultural environment of particular interest to me. More recently, events like the Hurricane Katrina disaster have been a catalyst for my emotions and feelings in wanting to do something that actually helps the world in collaborating and communicating more effectively together on a larger scale. Immediately after the hurricane, the Recovery 2.0 project ( http://www.recovery2.com/ ), initiated by Jeff Jarvis, interested me the most. However, the more I researched ways for people to collaborate together on a larger scale using blogs, tags, and RSS, the more I realized this idea could be used for any type of large scale project, not just for disaster relief.

Also, the more I researched this, the more I wanted to collaborate and work with others within a company toward this goal. I know this is going make this cover letter lengthy but I just want to make you fully aware of what an amazing coincidence your company announcement has been to me as at the beginning of September I posted the following message on Craigslist’s job area for Vancouver. And as you’ll see below, I think your company’s goals match quite closely with what I was looking for in a company.

> Are You A Caring And Creative Tech Company?
>
>Do you know of a caring and creative tech company or organization 
>located in Vancouver, BC who is working on a Web 2.0 social software 
>application to allow millions of people around the world to collaborate
>and  share information more effectively? If so please let me know. I’m
>feeling fed  up and frustrated by the Katrina Disaster and would like
>to work with a group  of people who are working on ideas and technology
>of this nature to help  make the world a better place.

And finally with regards to my actual skills and abilities, in relation to your job description, my background has allowed me to perform, in one way or another, most of what you are looking for in a person to fulfill this role. Most of my knowledge over the years has primarily been self-taught due to my ongoing ethusiasm for research and exploration of new ideas and technologies. I am also what you would call an extremely proactive individual in that I believe in solving problems before they happen. Working within a team environment, I strongly believe in being well organized and detailed so that any work performed by one person within the team environment can easily be passed onto another person to continue the work process. As for a wide range of responsibilities, I assisted with pretty much every aspect of operations within the last company I worked for (i.e. web development, computer support, proposal writing / reviews, process & standards definition / documentation, technology / software research, branding / identity, business advice, and more), primarily because it was a startup and the environment permitted me to help out wherever I could.

If you would like to find out more about me, definitely check out my blog at http://nollind.whachell.com with particular interest on my Notable Entries listing within my right sidebar column. I hope both of you will be just as amazed as I was at how close our goals and visions are for a better world.

And finally, while I can only put so much within this cover letter and résumé, I would love the opportunity to meet and talk to both of you in person, so that I can relay more about myself and my stories that directly relate to this job and your company’s goals.

Yours truly,

Nollind Whachell
nollind@whachell.com
(604) 732-9403

PS. Web 2.0 Definition: Web 2.0 is more about a change of thinking than about a change of technology. It is about taking existing technological tools and rethinking their usage to allow us to do things in amazing new ways.