Hey guys, I'll be applying to an associate producer position here soon, and this is a draft of my cover letter. Tear it apart, let me know what sucks. Thanks!
[EDIT] new version posted below
Salutations,
I am writing today with regards to the Associate Developer position as advertised on your website. I feel that with my history with project management, my passion for games, and my engineering experience, I would be a perfect fit for this opening.
I am a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota, graduating with a BS in Computer science. While in school, I took classes such as Project Management which left me prepared for all aspect of the development life cycle. Through this class, I was introduced to the Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota, who were very interested in the creation of an iPhone application for their members. While developing the application, we met with the customer numerous times to create a well-defined scope document, outlining all of the deliverables of the project. Once we determined the scope of the project, we calculated a risk assessment of the project to determine the viability of our deadlines and budget considerations. When all deadlines and deliverables had been assessed, we created a Gantt chart to monitor our progress in all aspects of the project, from weekly meetings to code development. The project was developed using agile development methodology, specifically a variant of the Waterfall format, and all deliverables were created on time, and up to quality standards.
At my current job, I am the technical lead for my project, the creation of automation to test web applications. During this project, I have acted as liaison between the project managers and developers. I determine the priority of tasks for our customer and distribute work to our developer team in India. Previously to my joining the team, the PMs simply handed down tasks from the customer to the developers with no organization of labor. Since I have joined, I now negotiate timelines with the Project managers, relating my technical experience to them as they determine the tasks for us to complete. I aided in the drafting of a defined scope document for our project, giving hard limitations to the tasks which could be given us. When I joined the project, deliverables were 6+ months overdue, and now we are back on schedule with our new scope document.
Outside of the university and jobs, I have organized and lead an international team of artists, musicians, and testers in order to create flash games, available online at www.moosetacular.com. We have created our games using Design documents, and milestone dates for progress. We keep up to date using many methods of communication, from email, to Instant messaging, and Skype conferences. I have headed the design and coding of the games, working closely with a team of 15 beta testers to get feedback on game play, user interfaces , and general user experience. We have even kept ourselves to a strict, two week deadline for some of our games, to test our ability to rapidly design and prototype.
With these experiences, and those listed on my attached resume, I feel that I would fill the role of Associate Producer wonderfully. Please feel free to contact me anytime via email at abcd@efgh.com or via my cell phone at (xxx)xxx-xxxx. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
abcd
[Edited by - supermoose on November 18, 2010 2:42:35 PM]
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Cover letter - Tear it apart!
I'll provide a new notes, not necessarily in any particular order or level of importance.
* Your first sentence says Associate Developer instead of Associate Producer.
* You never acknowledge the company you're applying to, demonstrating that this cover letter wasn't a copy paste of something you sent to someone else.
* What does the company say they're looking for in an AP? What are the core values or pillars of the company, possibly posted publicly on their website in the form of a mission statement? How do you relate to the specifics of what they're looking for?
* 'The project was developed using agile development methodology, specifically a variant of the Waterfall format' makes no sense, really. Agile and waterfall are very contradictory to each other. How did you inject agile methodologies into a waterfall schedule, or vice versa?
* In your third body paragraph, you say 'Design documents'. Don't capitalize design here. It isn't a proper word.
* Your introduction lists a history or project management, passion for games, and engineering experience, so I would expect the rest of the cover letter to flow in a matter of specifically hitting these bullet points. It sort of does, but not necessarily in that order.
* Maybe it is just me, but it feels verbose. Your first body paragraph goes on and on with things like creating gantt charts and holding meetings. A monkey can make a gantt chart and of course you had meetings. What skills did you bring to the table that benefited that project that demonstrates you'd make an excellent AP? That is what you should be highlighting.
* Your first sentence says Associate Developer instead of Associate Producer.
* You never acknowledge the company you're applying to, demonstrating that this cover letter wasn't a copy paste of something you sent to someone else.
* What does the company say they're looking for in an AP? What are the core values or pillars of the company, possibly posted publicly on their website in the form of a mission statement? How do you relate to the specifics of what they're looking for?
* 'The project was developed using agile development methodology, specifically a variant of the Waterfall format' makes no sense, really. Agile and waterfall are very contradictory to each other. How did you inject agile methodologies into a waterfall schedule, or vice versa?
* In your third body paragraph, you say 'Design documents'. Don't capitalize design here. It isn't a proper word.
* Your introduction lists a history or project management, passion for games, and engineering experience, so I would expect the rest of the cover letter to flow in a matter of specifically hitting these bullet points. It sort of does, but not necessarily in that order.
* Maybe it is just me, but it feels verbose. Your first body paragraph goes on and on with things like creating gantt charts and holding meetings. A monkey can make a gantt chart and of course you had meetings. What skills did you bring to the table that benefited that project that demonstrates you'd make an excellent AP? That is what you should be highlighting.
I'm not in HR and have no qualifications for judging this, but anyway:
Your first paragraph seems quite boring to me. I'm pretty sure every engineering grad ever has done this or something just like it. You can still talk mention it, but maybe try to trim it down a bit, don't need to know every minutia of your project design flow. There's little mention of what you actually accomplished either other than 'we created all deliverables on time', which is quite vague. Did you actually finish the application? Or maybe that was not the point of project.
Your second and third paragraphs are ten times as interesting, but they're only half as long. I'd focus on these experiences some more (I wouldn't make the overall length much longer though).
Also I'd be careful in your first paragraph, I see the term 'we' an awful lot, which I wouldn't like to see. This position is considering hiring you, not your team. I have no idea what you have actually done on this project, or whether or not you're just a dead-weight team member who doesn't do anything and is trying to credit from his team's accomplishments.
Your first paragraph seems quite boring to me. I'm pretty sure every engineering grad ever has done this or something just like it. You can still talk mention it, but maybe try to trim it down a bit, don't need to know every minutia of your project design flow. There's little mention of what you actually accomplished either other than 'we created all deliverables on time', which is quite vague. Did you actually finish the application? Or maybe that was not the point of project.
Your second and third paragraphs are ten times as interesting, but they're only half as long. I'd focus on these experiences some more (I wouldn't make the overall length much longer though).
Also I'd be careful in your first paragraph, I see the term 'we' an awful lot, which I wouldn't like to see. This position is considering hiring you, not your team. I have no idea what you have actually done on this project, or whether or not you're just a dead-weight team member who doesn't do anything and is trying to credit from his team's accomplishments.
Author
Wonderful! Thanks for the quick feedback.
Zer0, I know I never mentioned the company, partially due to keeping it internet friendly, and partly because I am afraid of sounding like a brown-noser if I start listing off games they have made which I like. I could definitely get more specific to the company by directly addressing their mission statements, but should I mention any products in detail? The methodology we actually used is the V-Model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model_%28software_development%29 It is similar in order and structure to the waterfall, but the development and implementation are more closely intertwined, making it able to be agile.
Karwosts, Thanks for pointing out the "we" problem. I'll be fixing that, along with adding more detail about what I did specifically.
Thanks again! any more feedback would be great!
Zer0, I know I never mentioned the company, partially due to keeping it internet friendly, and partly because I am afraid of sounding like a brown-noser if I start listing off games they have made which I like. I could definitely get more specific to the company by directly addressing their mission statements, but should I mention any products in detail? The methodology we actually used is the V-Model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model_%28software_development%29 It is similar in order and structure to the waterfall, but the development and implementation are more closely intertwined, making it able to be agile.
Karwosts, Thanks for pointing out the "we" problem. I'll be fixing that, along with adding more detail about what I did specifically.
Thanks again! any more feedback would be great!
Quote: Original post by supermoose
Zer0, I know I never mentioned the company, partially due to keeping it internet friendly, and partly because I am afraid of sounding like a brown-noser if I start listing off games they have made which I like. I could definitely get more specific to the company by directly addressing their mission statements, but should I mention any products in detail?
It isn't brown nosing to say you're interested in their products. Showing an already established familiarly with their products demonstrates a genuine interest in the position. When I am looking at a cover letter I sure as heck want to see that this person at least knows who they're applying to. This cover letter has no personalization to the company.
Quote: The methodology we actually used is the V-Model. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Model_%28software_development%29 It is similar in order and structure to the waterfall, but the development and implementation are more closely intertwined, making it able to be agile.
Don't tell me, tell your intended audience. How did you apply the V-Model of production to benefit the project, and why was it the best choice? Information like this is infinitely more interesting/applicable to an AP position than the fact that you can make a gantt chart.
Author
Update! I added in specificity, dropped some of the humdrum University babble, reorganized to put my two exiting paragraphs first and last, and fixed some dumb typos. Round two, Tear into it again, boys.
Salutations,
I am writing today with regards to the Associate Producer position as advertised on your website. I feel that with my real world project experience, my university engineering experience, and my personal passion for games I would be a perfect fit for this opening, and an asset to Activision Value.
At my current job, I am the technical lead for my project, creating automation to test web applications and interfaces. During this project, I have acted as liaison between the project managers and developers. I determine the priority of tasks for our customer and distribute work to our developer team in India. Previous to my joining the team, the PMs simply handed down tasks from the customer to the developers with no organization of labor. Since I have joined, I now negotiate timelines with the Project managers, relating my technical experience to them as they determine the tasks for us to complete. I aided in the drafting of a defined scope document for our project, giving hard limitations to the tasks which could be given us. When I joined the project, deliverables were 6+ months overdue, and now we are back on schedule with our new scope document.
I am a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota, graduating with a BS in Computer science. While in school, I took classes such as Project Management which left me prepared for all aspects of the development life cycle. Through this class, I was introduced to the University Alumni Center, who sponsored the creation of an iPhone application for their members. I utilized the V-Model software development methodology to organize the goals of the project and keep our members on track. The V-Model worked well because our team members had a mix of backgrounds, ranging from very strict classical project management to very open ended agile development. This model allowed me to keep the agile workers happy with an interleaved testing/implementation methodology late in the project, while satisfying the more concrete minded team members by keeping a distinct development-implementation flow early on. We aligned our team strategy with Activision's mission of maintaining a culture of financial discipline. As a result, the Alumni Center has already seen turnaround on the app.
Outside of the university and job I have organized and lead an international team of artists, musicians, and testers in order to create flash games, available online at www.moosetacular.com. We have created our games using design documents, and milestone dates for progress. I keep up to date with my team members using many methods of communication, from email, to instant messaging, and Skype conferences. I have headed the design and coding of the games, working closely with a team of 15 beta testers to get feedback on game play, user interface , and general user experience. I have even kept our developers to a strict, two week deadline for some games, to test our ability to rapidly design and prototype.
With these experiences, and those listed on my attached resume, I feel that I would fill the role of Associate Producer wonderfully. I would be thrilled to work on games like History Civil War: Secret Missions, telling a great story while providing an immersive experience. Please feel free to contact me anytime via email at abcd@efgh.com or via my cell phone at (xxx)xxx-xxxx. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
abcd
Salutations,
I am writing today with regards to the Associate Producer position as advertised on your website. I feel that with my real world project experience, my university engineering experience, and my personal passion for games I would be a perfect fit for this opening, and an asset to Activision Value.
At my current job, I am the technical lead for my project, creating automation to test web applications and interfaces. During this project, I have acted as liaison between the project managers and developers. I determine the priority of tasks for our customer and distribute work to our developer team in India. Previous to my joining the team, the PMs simply handed down tasks from the customer to the developers with no organization of labor. Since I have joined, I now negotiate timelines with the Project managers, relating my technical experience to them as they determine the tasks for us to complete. I aided in the drafting of a defined scope document for our project, giving hard limitations to the tasks which could be given us. When I joined the project, deliverables were 6+ months overdue, and now we are back on schedule with our new scope document.
I am a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota, graduating with a BS in Computer science. While in school, I took classes such as Project Management which left me prepared for all aspects of the development life cycle. Through this class, I was introduced to the University Alumni Center, who sponsored the creation of an iPhone application for their members. I utilized the V-Model software development methodology to organize the goals of the project and keep our members on track. The V-Model worked well because our team members had a mix of backgrounds, ranging from very strict classical project management to very open ended agile development. This model allowed me to keep the agile workers happy with an interleaved testing/implementation methodology late in the project, while satisfying the more concrete minded team members by keeping a distinct development-implementation flow early on. We aligned our team strategy with Activision's mission of maintaining a culture of financial discipline. As a result, the Alumni Center has already seen turnaround on the app.
Outside of the university and job I have organized and lead an international team of artists, musicians, and testers in order to create flash games, available online at www.moosetacular.com. We have created our games using design documents, and milestone dates for progress. I keep up to date with my team members using many methods of communication, from email, to instant messaging, and Skype conferences. I have headed the design and coding of the games, working closely with a team of 15 beta testers to get feedback on game play, user interface , and general user experience. I have even kept our developers to a strict, two week deadline for some games, to test our ability to rapidly design and prototype.
With these experiences, and those listed on my attached resume, I feel that I would fill the role of Associate Producer wonderfully. I would be thrilled to work on games like History Civil War: Secret Missions, telling a great story while providing an immersive experience. Please feel free to contact me anytime via email at abcd@efgh.com or via my cell phone at (xxx)xxx-xxxx. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
abcd
It's very long. I didn't feel like reading it. It's longer than some of my cover letters, and many said that those were too long.
Yours is 1 page itself with 12 Times New Roman font, without addressing and all the necessary stuff. Try to fit all the formatted letter to a page. What if you have to send it as a letter? It is awkward, that your last paragraph would fall on another A4 page.
Yours is 1 page itself with 12 Times New Roman font, without addressing and all the necessary stuff. Try to fit all the formatted letter to a page. What if you have to send it as a letter? It is awkward, that your last paragraph would fall on another A4 page.
I agree with szecs, as I was getting at with my last bullet point in my first post. You need to get to the point more. A quick google search pulls up a lot of cover letter examples. You entire cover letter should be able to be cleanly printed out on a single pieces of paper, without resorting to small fonts or wide margins. Check out the OWL at Purdue. It Purdue's online writing lab, and contains a lot of useful information for topics such as writing a cover letter. Read through the cover letter workshop links.
Author
Much appreciated. Cover letter shortened, double checked against app criteria, and sent off.
I'll post again if something comes of it ;)
I'll post again if something comes of it ;)
Guess its too late for feedback, but for the future I feel like some of your sentence structure was off -- awkward in small ways. For example, you often include a comma before 'and' which introduces an akward pause and is somewhat disjoint. It is also somewhat overly verbose, and is too long in general.
Here's how I might have written it:
There's still a few things content-wise that don't flow as nicely as they might, and there wasn't much I could do to shorten it more than I did -- mostly because I lack the knowledge to determine what could be cut or less detailed. Stylistically though, I think it reads more smoothly.
Here's how I might have written it:
Quote:
Salutations,
I am writing today in regard to the position of Associate Producer [include job reference number if available] as advertised in the [careers/jobs] section of your website. I feel that my combination of university engineering and real-world project experience, along with my personal passion for games, would make me a valuable asset to Activision Value.
In my current role I serve as technical lead of a team which creates automated test code for web applications and their interfaces. In this capacity I have acted as a liaison between project managers and developers as well as determining project priorities based on customer requirements and assigning work tasks to our development team in India. Prior to my arrival, project managers regularly handed tasks to our development team with no organization of labor [or established timelines]. Since my arrival I have worked to resolve these shortcomings by relating my technical experience to project managers as they determine our task list and schedule development milestones. I have also aided in drafting a Defined Scope Document for our project which sets expectations between our customer, project managers and development team. These efforts have helped our project -- previously 6 months overdue -- get back on schedule.
During my education at the University of Minnesota (B.Sc. Computer Science) I [elected/took] classes such as Project Management which have prepared me for all aspects of the software development life cycle. Through this class I was introduced to the University Alumni Center which was interested in sponsoring the creation of an iOS application for their members. Volunteering for the effort, I utilized agile methodologies (V-Model) to organize goals and track team progress. This development model allowed me to keep agile-minded team members happy by including an interleaved testing/implementation methodology late in the project, while satisfying the more classically-minded team members by including a distinct development-implementation flow early on. From the beginning, we aligned our team strategy with maintaining a culture of financial discipline and, as a result, the Alumni Center has already seen turnaround on the app.
Outside of my university and professional life, I lead an international team of artists, musicians and testers in the creation of Flash-based browser games [distributed/freely available] online at www.moosetacular.com. We structure our development after common industry practices, including the creation of game design and technical documents, and use free communication tools such as email, instant messaging and Skype conferences to keep in touch. I also lead the game design and coding efforts for the team, working closely with our 15 testers to gain feedback on gameplay, UI and general user experience. As a team, our commitment to rapid design and prototyping practices has allowed us to go from zero to [first-playable/finished product] in as little as two weeks.
With these experiences, and those listed in the attached resume, I feel that I would fill the role of Associate Producer capably and would be thrilled to work for a world-class publisher such as Activision.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing back about this exciting opportunity.
Sincerely,
[signature if possible]
[first and last name]
[professional email address]
[phone number]
There's still a few things content-wise that don't flow as nicely as they might, and there wasn't much I could do to shorten it more than I did -- mostly because I lack the knowledge to determine what could be cut or less detailed. Stylistically though, I think it reads more smoothly.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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