Chapter 12 Professional Writing

Creating Solid Résumés

Common résumé formats vary with types of jobs and with the times, but regardless of the type of position you are seeking, your résumé should include some key features and some key information.

Key Résumé Information

Every résumé should include the following information:

• professional name
• address
• phone number
• e-mail address
• work experience (i.e., places of employment)
• accomplishments at each place of employment
• education

These résumé components are optional:

• personal interests
• references
• dates of education and work experience
• address for personal website
• employment objective (a good strategy if you want to tailor your résumé for a certain job description)
• fax number
• awards and honors

To ensure that your résumé is both current and appropriate for the position, you should search online for similar sample résumés. You should also run your résumé past the career placement services at your college and any people you know who are working in your field of interest. Here’s Joey’s generic résumé:

Writing Targeted Cover Letters

Along with sending a résumé when applying for a job, you will almost always want to send a cover letter. This suggestion holds true in both hard-copy and digital situations. A hard-copy cover letter should be formatted as a standard, typed business letter (for a sample, see Chapter 12 "Professional Writing", Section 12.1 "Writing Business Letters"). A digital cover letter should be either typed directly into a given window or copied and pasted into the window. If you copy and paste, check to make sure that the formatting holds.

When the job market is tight, just getting an interview is a major hurdle. Facing dozens and sometimes even hundreds of applicants, employers are looking for reasons to cut down their pool of potential interviewees. Don’t give them a reason not to interview you by writing a vaguely worded, overly general letter of application or résumé, especially when you can easily revise and tailor your approach to each position for which you are applying.

To target a cover letter means to write it specifically for an identified job. You can gather information to target your cover letter by looking carefully at the job description and by studying the company’s website. Let’s look at an example of an online job description that has caught Joey’s attention:

As Joey prepares his cover letter, he’ll need to include, in three or four paragraphs, information about himself and his fitness for the position that complement what his résumé already reveals. Typical contents of the paragraphs of his cover letter might include the following:

Fourth Paragraph

• A statement about wanting to have an opportunity to discuss the job
• An offer to send references as needed
• Request to be contacted and a reiteration of his main contact information (most likely a phone number or an e-mail address or both)

Keep in mind that your cover letter is the first chance to present yourself and often the only chance. Besides being sure to include the most pertinent and valuable information you have to offer, be very careful that your letter is grammatically correct with no punctuation or spelling errors. Proofread it carefully yourself, and then, even if you think the letter is perfect, ask a trusted acquaintance to proofread it. Errors in this kind of high-stakes writing situation can be fatal to your chances of achieving your desired goal: getting your foot in the door professionally.

As he is planning his cover letter, Joey decides to apply what he has learned in his academic writing career to this all-important professional challenge. Thus, before writing, he fills out the statement of purpose he used six years before when he was a first-year college student:

Voice	I am writing as a young, eager, well-educated, and flexible individual who wants to be a part of the GolinHarris team.
Message	I want to convey the message that I will bring extensive gaming, graphic design, and public relations experience and credentials to the position.
Audience	I want to write to the human resources department or hiring manager at GolinHarris.
Attitude	My attitude toward the subject is positive and confident, but also somewhat deferential, humble, and respectful of authority.
Reception	I want my audience to give me an interview because they realize they’ve got a hot local prospect who’s perfect for the job.
Tone	My tone toward my readers is professional, but creative, enthusiastic, and cutting-edge.

Armed with his statement of purpose, Joey writes the following cover letter:

Key Takeaways

• The visual elements of résumés are important, including subheadings, white space, paper choice, font choice, and limited use of font features.
• Your résumé should be available in both print format and digital format. Digital résumés must have very little formatting. A PDF version can sometimes be used instead of a nonformatted option.
• All résumés should include your professional name, address, phone number, e-mail address, work experience, and education. You might also choose to include your personal interests, references, website address, objective, fax number, and awards and honors.
• You should always include a paper or digital cover letter with your résumé. Your cover letter should include three or four paragraphs that include the position for which you are applying, the most relevant experiences you have had that make you a good candidate for the job, a request to discuss the job, and your contact information.
• Of all the types of writing you do, perhaps none requires more meticulous attention to detail and editing than résumés and cover letters.

Exercises

1. Create a résumé that you could use when applying for a specific position. Generate both a paper version and a digital version.
2. Find a position description for a job that interests you and fits your current or prospective skills. Write a cover letter that you could send with your résumé to apply for that job. Before you write your cover letter, use the job description as a guide for filling out a statement of purpose.
3. Working with your writing group, search online for a collection of job descriptions. Using an agreed-on selection from your sample, assign each member of your writing group the task of designing a résumé and cover letter to meet the needs of that description (with each group member “applying” under an assumed name). Then compare the submissions and determine which two applicants should be interviewed as finalists. Explain the reason for your choices.

Using E-mail in the Workplace

E-mailing started small in the 1960s and became more widespread by the 1990s. Today the idea of going a day without e-mails is incomprehensible to many people, both professionally and personally. Even though most working people in the United States have both personal and work e-mail, workplace e-mail guidelines make the two quite different. Failing to follow these guidelines for workplace e-mails can have a range of ramifications from mild embarrassment to termination from your job. The following guidelines are general and most of them will apply in most workplaces. You are likely to find, however, that your workplace has its own guidelines that you will need to learn and follow.

Here are some general workplace e-mail guidelines:

• Make sure your writing has no grammatical, spelling, or punctuation errors and no typos. Any e-mail, whether it is sent internally or externally, reflects not only on the person sending it but also on the organization employing that person.
• Use standard wording, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. Do not use any of the abbreviated, casual text that is common in personal online communications.
• Use a subject line that targets the key point of the e-mail so that the subject line can be a helpful sorting or searching tool.
• Be concise.
• Be courteous.
• Use jokes sparingly since they are often misunderstood.
• Use short paragraphs. Large blocks of digital text are difficult to read.
• Type in upper- and lowercase letters. Writing in all capital letters is perceived as shouting and writing in all lowercase letters is difficult to read.
• Keep in mind that electronic text is very easy to share with few or many. Don’t put anything in an e-mail that would be problematic if shared beyond your intended recipient.
• Most e-mail systems allow you to design and include a signature at the end of your e-mails, with the company name, your title, your e-mail address, and your phone number. Unless you are writing to a colleague with whom you have daily contact, plan to include your signature.
• When e-mailing a business acquaintance you do not know well, use a standard business letter greeting (“Dear Jack” or “Dear Mr. Wichel”) and closing (“Sincerely”). When you do know the person well, you can relax the greeting and closing a little if doing so would mesh with the culture of your company.
• Keep in mind that different computers and e-mail programs receive e-mail text differently. Do not rely on text features, such as bolding, italicizing, color, and underlining, to carry meaning.
• Clean up forwarded e-mails so that old e-mail components are not included unnecessarily or unintentionally.
• Take great care with your tone. A good way to check that your tone comes off accurately is to reread your e-mail aloud once you are finished writing it. If you sense that you are sending or replying to an e-mail out of anger or frustration, enforce an overnight cooling-off period before clicking the send button.
• If you make changes in your e-mail, reread the whole e-mail when you are finished to make sure you made any needed adjustments to accommodate the changes.
• Avoid using your work e-mail for personal messages, and especially avoid sending any messages or attachments that could be considered vulgar, offensive, or inappropriate. Keep in mind that all work e-mail might be monitored.
• Try not to send unusually large attachments that might clog the in-boxes of colleagues and coworkers, and keep your mailbox clean, so you don’t overtax the server space of your organization.

Using Other Online Networking

The e-mail guidelines in Section 12.4.1 "Using E-mail in the Workplace" also apply to other online networking situations. Whether you use other online networking tools will depend on your company. Having a general awareness of some of the other options is helpful when you join a company.

Table 12.1 "Some Other Online Networking Options" gives an overview of a few types of online networking options.