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, let’s pretend that you work for the Miami-Dade County Tourist Development Council. Your job doesn’t matter for this activity but it’s fun for me to imagine that you are working there. 

Here’s 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 he’d “Put in a good word for her.” He even said, “Don’t worry, we got this.”

You ask to see Friend’s 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 didn’t get the job, even with Uncle’s help – and we only have Uncle’s word for it that anyone in Plantation local government gives a hoot about Uncle’s opinion.

You go home and snuggle with your Sweetheart. “Jeez,” you sigh. “I’ve got to find some way to help Friend with Friend’s crap resume. Friend didn’t get the Plantation job.”

Sweetheart puts down the dishes that Sweetheart has been drying and sits down next to you. “Yeah. You’d better work that out. Because I’ll tell you this, your friend can’t live here — and we aren’t 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 Writer’s 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 don’t need to submit both.

• Approach 1: Rewrite Friend’s 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 Friend’s 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.