Technical and Professional Writing
Engl 402 Spring 2018
Employment Project
This assignment is worth 15% of your total grade and will be completed individually.
Grade breakdown:
Audience Analysis Memo (due January 19): 2%
Portfolio (due February 2 at 3 p.m.), consisting of:
Cover Letter/Personal Statement: 5%
Resume/Curriculum Vitae: 5%
Reflection Letter: 3%
Overview:
This project serves as an introduction to cover letters, personal statements, resumes, and curriculum vitaes, which are typically the first technical and professional documents an employer will see from you.
It is understood that many of you already have fantastic resumes, however, how well do you understand the underlying principles they depend upon, and how to apply those principles in other documents? The concepts introduced in this project serve as a rhetorical foundation for design that will be applied in future projects, and your final documents should demonstrate an awareness of, and the ability to apply, concepts from the readings and class discussion.
Assignment:
Resume and Cover Letter, or Curriculum Vitae and Personal Statement
Choose one of the jobs advertised at either WSU Jobs https://www.wsujobs.com or WSU Handshake at https://wsu.joinhandshake.com/login
and create a cover letter and resume for the job. For those interested in graduate programs you can, as an alternative, choose one of WSU's graduate programs and create a personal statement and curriculum vitae for the graduate program. You must have the qualifications for the job you choose--you cannot fabricate qualifications to address the requirements.
Original drafts are required, in accordance with Eng402 Program expectations. Preexisting documents will NOT be accepted, and use of preexisting documents will be grounds for a failing grade. It is understood that many of you already have documents you believe are great, and that some may not see the point in creating new documents. Besides avoiding plagiarism (use of preexisting documents is considered plagiarism by university standards), our goal in creating new documents is to learn, from the ground up, how these documents are constructed, and to give you the opportunity to try different arrangements and conceptual presentations.
Audience Analysis Memo
As part of your preparation for creating your application documents, you must fill out an Audience Profile Sheet (pages 85-87) and write an analysis of the audience for your employment documents (and NOT an analysis of the instructor). The analysis should be in memo format, single-spaced, and must be a minimum of one page, with an appropriate heading. The audience for this memo is the instructor.
Reflection Letter
In addition to including the application letter and resume, or personal statement and curriculum vitae, you must include a letter reflecting on the process you went through to compose your documents, describing which design principles are used in your documents and how they are used, and what you learned from composing the documents. You may also want to comment on what further work you might need to do to make your job application materials even more effective.
This letter should be addressed to the instructor in his role as instructor; a little research should yield appropriate contact information for the instructor.
Required Contents of Portfolio (with clear labels)
1. Reflection Letter
2. Job Ad or Graduate program information
3. Letter or Personal Statement
4. Resume or CV
5. Copies of your original drafts and peer-reviewed drafts. You are welcome to include in this appendix any additional materials you feel will demonstrate learning.