Resume & Job Letter

This exercise will involve creating a resume and job letter specific to a career and company. The goal of this exercise is to practice defining an audience and communicating your qualifications to that audience.

*Hint: This exercise is incredibly practical! Use it to your advantage! Do you have a job that you want to apply for already? Realistically speaking, you will have to do this eventually! Might as well do it with help!

Step One: This assignment starts with finding a job ad. I selected an ad from Monster.com for a Science Staff Editor position at World Book Inc. Although I did not meet all the requirements I knew that I could find ways to make what I did have fit their job. Here is a link to the job ad: World Book Inc. Job Ad. I then found a resume that fit the job I was applying for. Since I was applying for the job as a technical editor I found an example resume for a technical editor. That resume can be found here: Sample Resume.

*Hint: Monster.com is a great search engine! I definitely recommend it!

Step Two: You have to write your resume to your audience. The best way to determine your audience is to research the company you are applying to. Through Yahoo! Finance and Wikipedia I become more informed on what World Book Inc. would be looking for in a potential job applicant. I was then able to include this information in my job letter and resume.

*Hint: Not only will research improve your grade on the assignment, in the future it will show the companies that you apply to that you have ‘ done your homework’.

I modeled my resume after the example resume for a technical editor. I also used to the example Dr. Fricke provided for both the job letter as well as the follow-up thank you letter. I have attached both of my drafts to the post. Hopefully this will help you write your own draft : )
One thing I learned: If I could resubmit this assignment I would change several things. First, I would have made it more clear in the job letter which qualifications I did and did not meet. I know now that I did not make that very clear in my job letter. Second, I would have paid closer attention to formatting my memo consistently. Consistent formatting would make my resume easier to understand resulting in a more professional looking resume. Third, my job letter was filled with useless information that I should have edited out. My job letter would have been much stronger if I had properly focused the content.

What I Learned: This first assignment taught me a lot about communicating in a job letter. I learned the importance of focusing my thoughts and writing to an audience. This would become useful in future assignments. Although, as I began to see, some bad habits are hard to break.

Below are the files that I turned in to Dr. Fricke:

Resume : This link contains my resume.

Job Letter : This letter would be attached with my resume.

Mock Follow up Letter : This letter would be sent after my interview.