April 22, 2013 James Gentes CEO/Founder The Social Business 141 NW Greenwood Ave, Suite 100, Bend, OR 97701 Dear Mr. Gentes, Your emerging tech company, The Social Business, has the potential to succeed in the highly competitive market, and further assistance would help it reach its maximum efficiency. A person like yourself, a busy father of two, could use help to take some of the stress out of being an entrepreneur. I am applying for an internship of whatever position you deem necessary. I have already managed a community clubhouse during events and parties, and this has taught me how to be attentive and stay on task. With working at a large facility, taking responsibility is key. Forgetting to lock a single door can lead to massive thief. In addition, I am Web Editor-in-Chief for Hilights, my high school’s newspaper, a position I have earned after two years on staff. As Web Editor-in-Chief, I have grown in my use of social media services, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, knowledge of which all pertains to my ability to help at The Social Business. Additionally, I have mastered my use of Photoshop, which I have been certified in, and InDesign. With experience working with a brand’s social media accounts and a fundamental background in Photoshop, InDesign and computers, I make an excellent, well-rounded candidate for an intern at The Social Business. My attention to detail would keep the company well run, and help you attend to all the minor, but crucial details that are easy to forget. The general knowledge I possess about technology, social media and computers would lend myself well to suggesting and expanding ideas currently implemented in The Social Business. Also, after countless hours of supporting family and friends with technology over the phone and in person, I am able to help support customers in a detailed yet thorough and polite manner. I understand you have plenty of work to do, and I appreciate you taking time out of your day to read this application. I believe that a personal interview either over the phone or Skype would lend better to us discussing my abilities, which are further detailed in the resume enclosed. Thank you for the consideration. I look forward to your further inquiry and our upcoming interview. Respectfully yours,
Tommy McDonald Enclosed: resume
Objective
To learn how an entrepreneur in the tech field creates a business, builds it, and innovates.
Education
• Boone High School, Orlando, Florida • GPA: 4.79 • Top 3% of class • SAT Score: 2060
Experience Activites
Newspaper (10th-12th grade)
Web Editor in Chief (12th grade): I post one story to the newspaper’s website each week, manage and update the newspaper’s multiple social media accounts daily, edit stories for the website from each of the 15 staffers and design and create the parts of the paper involving social media responses. Staffer (10th-11th grade): I had 20 stories published in print and 24 published online.
Tennis (9th-11th grade) Chess Club Marketing Manager (12th grade)
Volunteering
Orlando Science Center, lab demonstrator (70 hours over 1.5 years): I was in charge of demonstrating labs, attracting visitors to demonstrations and staying on schedule by moving locations throughout the building while working with an assigned partner.
Down Syndrome Foundation Bike Camp, volunteer (18 hours): I taught children with disabilities to ride bikes on their own. I ran with kids around a course to make sure they didn’t fall over and support them through encouragement and instruction. I was responsible for their safety and progress.
Work
Windsong, office employee (May 2013 to present): I work four to six hours each week managing a pool, boat, multiple paddleboards, canoes and kayaks.
Awards
2014 NSPA Online Pacemaker Finalist (Editor) National Honor Society (2013-present): I volunteer with NHS every quarter of the school year for a
community service project in addition to completing an additional 5 hours of community service every quarter which includes tutoring.
AP Scholar with Distinction (2014) Newbie of the Year for Newspaper (2012-2013): I received this award after my first year on staff
because of my high level of execution and commitment, which led me to become Web Editor in Chief on the newspaper this year.
Boone High School Varsity Tennis GPA Award (2014): This award is awarded to one tennis player from each grade who has the highest GPA.
References
• Renee Burke: Hilights newspaper and Legend yearbook adviser. • Susan Woods: Windsong Community Manager. • Lindy Shepherd: Crealde Marketing Manager.
I received my start in journalism when I heard about Boone’s outstanding publications program, and its exceptional teacher. After completing a year of newspaper, it seemed like the best fit for me because of my strengths in writing compared to photography and design. I have focused this year on the online and social component of journalism since I am the Web Editor-inChief. This includes learning how to use social media tools such as Buffer, a social media posting manager, Bit.ly, link-shortening analytics, and Google Analytics, a general web analytics tool. Using these tools, I was able to figure out which kind of content would generate the most engagement at the ideal time. While the interactive page only existed in the paper for two issues, during the creation of it I learned how to better design a page. Even when I had written full time in the paper, I never had as much work with design as I did with those two stores. I will be able to use these skills of learning about a new field anytime I am entering a completely new area, such as studying computer science in college, or learning about a specific area, such as a new computer programming language. Deadlines became vastly different than they had in previous years. I was able to learn how to manage my time on my own. For the print, I did not have as many set deadlines; I just needed to finish my work before we went to press. I learned how to start early enough on the tweets column so that I had scheduled in time to receive an ample amount of responses, filter through them and create the page. For the web, my deadlines were also very loose, but when a story arose, its submission usually had to be within a day. This combination of loose deadlines, some having substantially more time gave me experience with a real-world job, where deadlines vary in length. Sometimes learning comes when something unfortunate occurs; this is exactly what happened when FLVS decided to not renew their ad. While I had planned on their ad making my senior year of selling easy, I had to make up hundreds of dollars I had counted on them to buy. Despite the setback, I found new advertisers, and it was relatively easy to sell enough once I got past the disappointment of losing FLVS as an advertiser. This has taught me things rarely go as planned, but there is always a way to persevere even if it is not ideal. Social media is essentially opt-in advertising; since social media was one of my primary focuses this year, I gained experience with advertising. I learned that you have to target to your audience and the time of their viewing. For example, athletics and school events was better for student engagement than music or entertainment, because this content was exclusive to Hilights. Also, posting a link in a tweet between 6 and 8 p.m. was more effective than at 9 a.m, because the amount of people using social media services is much greater the later the day progresses. These skills will help me this summer during my internship at Crealde where I will focus on social media and marketing. My commitment to Hilights my senior year was not marked by long hours in room-224, but rather by my continual delivery of web content, social media management and consistent help with the paper. I posted a link to Twitter and Facebook for the content posted to hilights.org that would appeal the most to students on social media, helping to expand our web presence for our social media accounts and website. With the web being the future of all media, helping to push our brand onto the web is vital. My main focus this year was posting content on the web, and I covered a number of key topics including a West Point appointment, a valedictorian, the Braves and Cowboys dance, two national signing days, the vandalization at Boone by Edgewater, the Jefferson Awards, and the boys golf team among countless other stories. This increased content on the web helped expand the number of stories that Braves cared the most about, which were the stories that were about them. In addition to focusing directly on the web, I helped integrate the web within the paper, with the social page and tweets from students in each issue, further bridging the gap between our online community and school community.
My most significant work for Hilights this year is the interactive page, “Social #dirtywater” because it represented the anticipation and rivalry leading up to the Battle of the Barrel, the most historic and prideful days on the reservation all year. The page documented the students’ involvement in the hype before the event by displaying content from social media relating to the Boone-Edgewater game. Also, it engaged them through their direct interaction on Twitter with @boonepubs. The page’s aim was to get students to interact with the paper more on social media, and it successfully did this. Although the page might seem like it was easy to put together, putting together all the various elements was tedious and required planning. Getting each image to fit together was difficult, because there was a limited amount of images to choose from on social media. While students were excited about the event, it was not necessarily what they would post about on social media sites before the event or without being prompted to post. While I did prompt them in two parts on the page, I could not prompt them enough to fill the entire page. Once I found this content, I had to fit it into the dimensions of the page without distorting it. While it was relatively easy to fit all the content into the page originally, I had to remove a picture and part of another picture because the content was not appropriate. This led me to having to edit part of the content, by taking it apart in photoshop and repackaging it into a form that fit on the page without distorting the photo within it. Finding a piece of content to replace the photo that was entirely unusable was hard, but with the help of others, it was attainable. Altogether, creating the page taught me that any successful product requires trial and error and perseverance through setbacks. When the paper finally came out, all I heard about was about how many people loved the page. This is the most reaction to any work I have contributed on for Hilights, ever. It finally felt like all my hard work had truly paid off, for the first time ever on staff. Creating something others valued and enjoyed was a rewarding feeling I had never experienced before. The page tapped into the excitement regarding the game and social media interactivity to create an engaging page that genuinely got students excited to read the paper.
First Draft
Final Draft
N58. Feature Page Design Tabloid format: “Social #dirtywater” p.16 November 7, 2014. I would like this piece to represent me because it captures the anticipation leading up to the school’s oldest and most significant rivalry, the Battle of the Barrel. I like how the page integrated striking dominant graphics, student interaction and social media. This combination made the page engaging on multiple levels. Although all these elements made the page my best work this year, the student’s enthusiastic reaction to seeing the page let me know that it was truly something valued by students.
DM7. Personal opinion: On-campus issues. “Vote for dance sparks controversy” March 5, 2015. I would like this piece to represent me because it presents the background on the vote for the spring dance and thoroughly assessed the situation without bias for either the students or the school. The piece was delivered at a time when the issue was hot for both students and PTSA, and I think utilizing the web to pinpoint these kind of timely issues needs to be something that is not the odd occurrence but the norm. This piece did that.
DM16. Entertainment reviews: “Review: Only One (feat. Paul McCartney) by Kanye West” January 6, 2015. I would like this piece to represent me because it breaks down “Only One” in an in-depth manner by comparing it to other music while analyzing the song’s intracrities. The piece assesses all elements of the single, including it’s place in West’s career and the importance of individual lyrics. Overall, this review is concise yet covers everything it needs, which shows the growth in my writing from overly wordy to precise and well structured.
While the growth between my second and third year on staff is not as noticeable as between the first and second, I have made noticeable improvements; the change has been refinement rather than a complete transformation. My writing has become more focused and grammatically correct while previously my sentences would drag on endlessly. Essentially, my writing needs a lot less reworking and editing than it used too. My design has improved, morphing from unengaging mountains of copy to works focused on pictures and secondary coverage that do not strain the reader with long expanses of text. My two interactive pages, including “Social #dirtywater,” bring together student pictures in a visually interesting manner with columns of tweets, another form of engagement and tie-in for students. Also, “Where to fix your broken phone” utilized informational copy and an infographic rather than columns of text. This showed my growth as a journalist as I was able to craft the page around my story rather than vice versa. The informational text was to the point and made getting the most out of the story instantaneous. Also, the infographic was the first infographic I designed, showing my ability to push myself to learn new skills and apply them. In addition to my work in the paper, my portfolio design has become more complex. I have used 3D rendering in Photoshop with multiple layers to add additional lighting effects. Learning, altering and executing this process required many hours, something that drawing boxes and picking colors in InDesign did not require last year.
Front, page 1, October 10, 2014
Credit: Top Tweets
Entertainment, page 16, October 10, 2014
Credit: Social Credit:#Gameday, Top TweetsYour Selfies
Front, page 1, November 7, 2014
Credit: Top Tweets
Entertainment, page 16, November 7, 2014
Credit: All
Front, page 1, December 12, 2014
Credit: Top Tweets
Front, page 1, February 6, 2015
Credit: Top Tweets
Features, page 10, February 6, 2015
Credit: Ten in Ten
Front, page 1, March 13, 2015
Credit: Top Tweets
Features, page 1, October 10, 2015
Credit: Ten in Ten
Front, page 1, October 10, 2014
Credit: Top Tweets
Front, page 1, May 5, 2015
Credit: Top Tweets
Features, page 9, May 8, 2015
Credit: Ten in Ten, Where to Fix Your Broken Phone
Front, page 1, October 10, 2014
Credit: Top Tweets
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Front, page 1, October 10, 2014
Credit: Dominant image, upper left hand corner