For Project 6 you will create some typical employment documents, including a cover letter and a resume. Additonally, you will write a short (one page) memo to me giving me your views on the employment search and application process. This memo should be written after you have researched the job market and drafted your cover letter and resume. Also, please read carefully the sections "Purpose of the Resume and Cover Letter," "Resume Templates," and "Resume Myths and Legends" later on in this project description.

We will follow a scenario in which you select a job that you would like to have and for which you are qualified for either now or in the near future. So, you will select an actual ad from the recent classifieds although you won't actually submit your application for that job.

Your project will include the following items:

• a cover letter
• a current resume
• a one-page memo reflecting on the nature and practice of writing employment documents

Project Due Dates

• Writing/Online Exercise 9--Resume Myths and Legends: TBA
• Writing/Online Exercise 10--Web Sites on Writing Employment Documents: TBA
• Rough Draft: TBA
• APS: TBA
• Revised Draft: TBA

Project Format

Cover Letter: 1-2 pages

Resume: 1-2 pages

Purpose of the Resume and Cover Letter
The purpose of the cover letter is to get a person to read your resume. The purpose of a resume is to get the applicant an interview. Neither document will get an applicant the job. Often, though, applicants forget or try to deny that cover letters and resumes are discursive documents. In other words, they create an impression through words and appearance. In this sense, they are like all other business documents: they are rhetorical (that is, practical, context-specific, and so on). Hence, in looking to one of those ubiquitous "how to" books on writing resumes, we fool ourselves into thinking that there is a certain rhetorical instrument that will respond to any situation in which a person is applying for a job. That is rarely the case.

As writers and job applicants, then, we need to remember that a resume is partially a formal opportunity to present ourselves to someone whom we have never met and who might be a colleague in the near future. But that's just part of the context. There are also all the aspects of the ad to which we're responding, our own background, and so on that have a bearing on the application process. All that must be taken into account before we begin writing.

Again, don't forget the purpose of the cover letter and resume. The cover letter persuades a person to look at the resume, and the resume persuades a person to invite the applicant in for a personal interview. They are separate documents, but they are both part of a process.

Resume Templates
Most word processors offer users templates for creating typical documents such as resumes and cover letters. It is wise to make use of those templates. As a writer and job-seeker, It is even wiser to understand that even though you are in control of that template. For instance, it does not enhance your chances of landing a job to have your resume look like a dozen or more other resumes made with Microsoft Word. Yet, it is handy to have a place to start, and that is the purpose of the template: it gives you a preformatted starting place.

Everything that we have been concerned about regarding the formatting of documents is especially important in formatting a resume. So, even though I would encourage you to begin with a resume template, I would even more strongly encourage you to modify the appearance of the template to suit your needs. For instance, often the templates default to a 10-point font size. As I have mentioned, that is really too small to be easily readable. So, you should strongly consider increasing that font size to at least 11-point. Similarly, dates of employment might not be formatted the way you like. So change them. Likewise, the template might organize information differently from what you want. For instance, you need to decide if you are going to have a qualifications summary close to the beginning of the resume or if a summary of relevant experience is appropriate at the beginning.