27 Jun Resume Advice Email to a Friend

Resume Advice Email to a Friend

This is a role-playing exercise that asks you to imagine this email exchange.

The set up:

For the Week 5 Discussion Board Activity, you pretended that you worked for the City of Plantation and that your boss asked you to help evaluate candidates for a job. 

For the Week 6 Assignment, imagine that you are another person. This person could have any job. To fill in the story completely, lets pretend that you work for the Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council. Your job doesnt matter for this activity but its fun for me to imagine that you are working there. 

Heres the part that matters, your friend has applied to work for the City of Plantation Florida, and recently learned that her application is no longer under review.  Friend is shocked because Friend really thought she had a shot; her uncle has worked with the City of Plantation for more than 15 years and said hed Put in a good word for her. He even said, Dont worry, we got this.

You ask to see Friends resume.

[Use the one you picked as the worst when you were playing the hiring manager role for the Hiring Manager Challenge Report]

This resume is a hot mess! No wonder Friend didnt get the job, even with Uncles help and we only have Uncles word for it that anyone in Plantation local government gives a hoot about Uncles opinion.

You go home and snuggle with your Sweetheart. Jeez, you sigh. Ive got to find some way to help Friend with Friends crap resume. Friend didnt get the Plantation job.

Sweetheart puts down the dishes that Sweetheart has been drying and sits down next to you. Yeah. Youd better work that out. Because Ill tell you this, your friend cant live here — and we arent lending anybody any damn money.  

You go to the computer to write Friend an email with specific suggestions about how to improve the resume.

Step 1. Carefully review the crappy resume

Step 2. Remember the rhetorical triangle and consider the guidance about Writers self-presentation (Friend), Understanding your audience (City of Plantation Hiring managers) and Content/message, (the seemingly tiny choices that the writer makes in crafting a resume, like verbs and parallel structure to name a few.

Step 3. Write an email to Friend. Pick approach 1 OR 2; you dont need to submit both.

• Approach 1: Rewrite Friends resume, fixing what needs to be fixed. Your edits should be detailed and thoughtful. 
• Approach 2: Make a detailed list of at least 5 things that Friend should consider changing to make the resume more effective and for each item on your list, explain why these changes and following your advice will improve this resume and all of Friends resumes in the future. 

Step 4. Your Resume Advice Email to a Friend is the Week 5 assignment that you must submit. If you choose Approach 1 there is no required word count. If you choose Approach 2 your entry must be at least 250 words long.

Resume Advice Email to a Friend Frequently Asked Questions

You: Can I work with a friend in class on this activity?

Me: Yes, that kind of effort is called collaborative learning. This is the kind of assignment where collaborative learning often works well. You and your classmate can exchange ideas and perceptions about the work. I hope youll find someone to collaborate with!

You: Really?

Me: Yep.

You: Okay, so do we each get our own grade?

Me: Yes, you work together but then submit separately. If you work with a friend or two, write to let me know by adding this sentence at the end of your entry for this assignment. I worked with ____________ to think and talk through this work. 

You: So, wait my friends and I can submit the same Week 6 assignment work and that’s not cheating or plagiarism?

Me: Well, if you submit the exact same Week 6 Assignment response then it is likely that one person did most of the learning. Weve all been on teams where one person does all or most of the writing and everyone else just copies that persons work. Dont do that here. You have a capable brain, and you learned by working through this assignment. Write your own Week 5 entry in consultation with a friend or classmate. This class is about you.

Heres how youll be graded

Weekly Assignment Specifications Checklist

To earn all available points for the weeks assignment,  your submission must include all elements listed below. If your goal for this course is to earn an A, be sure to check off your completion of each element.

Content

• Answers all parts of the assignment prompt and expresses ideas clearly and in your own words
• Demonstrates careful attention to the assigned reading (or viewing) and/or research
• Includes at least one quote from the reading (or viewing) and/or research.
• Entry must meet the word count minimum specified in the instructions.

Document Specs

• Follows standard professional document formatting (1″ margins on all sides, double spacing, a professional font such as Times New Roman or Calibri, 12pt font)
• Submitted by the Due Date

Proofreading

• Demonstrates sufficient self-review to avoid careless errors like typos, misspellings, missing words, sentences without standard capitalization or punctuation. 

Assignment Grading Rubric

Grading Rubric Table

Excellent work

Almost there

Insufficient investment of time

Content

Satisfies each element on the specifications checklist AND appears to be the product of careful thinking.

The quote is selected to highlight one of your main points about the assigned reading. Research results suggest effort and attention. 

Answers are responsive to the questions, thoughtful, specific, and share your thinking as it stands right now. (You can change your mind in later Diary entries.) 

Satisfies each element on the specifications checklist but may have been hastily written. Reads like a rush job, rather than a series of careful ideas, flowing from one to the next.

Often the quote from the reading appears to have been selected without care or obvious logic and/or research conducted in haste; not a genuine inquiry.

Repetition or vagueness undermines the submissions power.

Misses one or more elements from the specifications checklist.

Reads like something you slapped together and phoned in, rather than a series of careful ideas, flowing one to the next.

Missing quote or research

Repetition or vagueness undermines the submissions power.

Document Specs

Satisfies each element on the specifications checklist.

Misses one element on the specifications checklist.

Misses more than one element on the specifications checklist.

Proofreading

Demonstrates sufficient self-review to avoid careless errors

Contains one or two careless errors that the writer could have caught by reviewing the work more carefully

Contains more than two errors that the writer could have caught by reviewing the work more carefully. Work that sacrifices points here often contains misspelling that Spellcheck flagged, sentences that dont make sense because of missing words, proper nouns that havent been capitalized. (Ex: Florida International University).