Over the past month of applying to jobs in the Bay Area I’ve garnered a few automated responses but nothing more. Today, though, I received my first personal reply.

The most intriguing part of the e-mail was that the hiring manager took the time and effort to highlight certain specific components and constraints of the position and the hiring process, asking me to take the time to consider them before deciding whether I want to proceed with an initial telephone interview (I do). I don’t believe I’ve ever seen that degree of thoughtfulness in a response to a job application, and I really appreciate that the person who would be my supervisor has taken that kind of approach; it demonstrates his own level of commitment to the process and to the organization.

So there’s been a positive development in the sometimes frustrating, stressful and discouraging task of trying to find a good, interesting, challenging job from 3,000 miles away. Moreover, this specific position is among those to which I’ve applied that most excites and interests me (even given that I’ve been really quite selective about my applications in general). When I first came across the announcement, quite serendipitously the day after it was posted, I was amazed at how specifically my qualifications fit the position, and how dramatically the position accorded with my own goals and interests; I said to Jeff and several friends that it practically couldn’t have been a more perfect match. The only other opportunities for which I could be as excited might be those at Yahoo! or Google (and I’ve got applications into the former, at least, and once I see a good match at the latter I’ll be tossing my hat in there too), since I’m such an avid user and enthusiast for so many of their products and services.

Since networking is one of the best ways to find employment, I’m open to contacts or leads any of you might have in the Bay Area and for those of you who already have already provided me such, thanks again. My expertise encompasses a range of skills from communications and public relations to program and project management to Internet, intranet and web services, with experience encompassing a dot-com startup (e-health), academia, public broadcasting and the federal government, among other industries. I’m a bit of a jack of trades–more Renaissance-ish than dilettante, I hope–with the bulk of my professional experience at the intersection of communications and technology, and I’m especially enthusiastic about the collaborative and community-building aspects of the Web. I’m sharp, creative, dedicated, hard-working and usually more self-effacing than this entry might suggest; recently, though, I’ve been frustrated by a sense that valuable but harder-to-quantify qualities like these aren’t as readily evidenced in a resume and cover letter. So I’ll risk a little self-promotion here. Still, if you’d like a copy of my resume, just let me know.