My communication skills are excellent, both on paper and in person, and I am great at being the glue that binds a successful project together. I can communicate on all sorts of levels, from technical to editorial to marketing to secretarial, and I work very well as part of a team. I am a hard worker, self-motivated and highly organised, and employers like me. Here are some examples of my people skills in action:
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Stress Management: I have long experience of managing web staff, both technical and editorial, particularly in difficult environments. A good example is h2g2; the site started out as an independent dot.com, but the company ran out of money and the BBC bought the site and its staff. I managed the eight-person editorial team through this incredibly difficult time, during which they weren't paid and feared for their jobs, and I managed to retain the entire team despite huge strain. This required tact, listening, openness and mutual support, as well as careful persuasion to ensure the site didn't stagnate as the money dried up.
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Customer Support: When the BBC bought h2g2, they insisted that we introduce moderation to a previously unmoderated site. You can imagine the stress that this caused in the h2g2 community, particularly as we had to close the site while the tools were built, but through a serious amount of customer support, we managed to get the community back up and running. It went from strength to strength, partly down to the high quality of online hosting that my team and I provided.The skills learned have been implemented across the BBC's messageboards in the DNA system, which grew out of h2g2.
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My Guestbook: A good way to see my people skills in action is to visit my Guestbook, where I make sure I respond to everything that isn't spam. That includes trolls; just because people don't like my writing, it doesn't mean they don't deserve a polite reply (at least, not until they genuinely don't deserve a reply – one shouldn't feed trolls, after all).
In summary, I'm a great communicator. It's probably because I like people; I'm not the kind of developer who's happy locked up in a dark bedroom, coding into the wee hours. I like working with other people, and it shows.