English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

As was discussed in the instructor’s blog #2, it is so frustrating when you are writing a resume and putting all of this thought and time into it only to have a recruiter spend a maximum of 30 seconds skimming over it. It kind of makes me feel as though it would be impossible to please everyone and it has to do with luck of the draw whether the person that happens to be reading your resume likes the style you have chosen. That being said, I think the most valuable quote on this blog was from the Rockport Institute regarding the selling of a product.

After reading the many readings for this week, I feel like I am back to square one. The first reading gave me a lot of confidence and I felt like my resume would be easy to write if I used its tips. Then I read another and began to question myself. After a couple more readings, I am still quite scared to start writing my resume. I had written all of my past resumes mostly based off of sample resumes, and didn’t make use of the many resources out there to help.

After going over the readings one of my major beliefs about resumes was reaffirmed. That is the fact that nothing beats quantifiable data. This was most apparent in “A Glimpse and a Hook” in which the person looking over resumes described his process. When looking over a resume he says that he concentrates on job history, interests, and schooling and does not look at the professional objective, skills, and summary of qualifications. He also states that cover letters are useless. He (or she) wants the obvious truths about your life to get that quick picture of who you are.

After going through all of these readings I have came to the conclusion that when the instructor said “Resumes are a gamble”, he was exactly right. When you go over all of the assigned reading you will notice that they are all different ways to go about writing your resume. To sum up all of the readings the main point of a resume is to explain you and your experience in the best way possible, while using the least amount of words possible.

In this blog I will tell you about what I took from chapter 8 (TCT), The basic principle of the writing formula, and the organizational effectiveness of an outline. Both ideas I have only recently took advantage of within writing.

I can't agree more with how important it is to structure a document well so that others can easily understand it. As a software engineer, I can relate this to programming. Programming is somewhat similar to writing English except in the case of programming, the documents written are meant to be read by the computer and other programmers. However, a lot of programmers forget that their code must be readable by other programmers and write it in a way such that only the author and the computer can understand them. There is a very large branch in software engineering dealing with how to write well designed and structured code.

Chapter 8- Organizing and Drafting
The main point of this chapter is that you need to present your information in a predictable and usable way. For example, with a resume you cannot have your information thrown about on a sheet of paper; you have to have it follow a certain pattern so the reader can obtain it all.

After reading through chapter 8 the main topic of organization is one that I find that I need to focus more on when writing. When it comes down to writing anything of importance the need for organization is key. With out any form of organizing your writings it will prove to be more difficult than if you were to organize your writings prior.

I am an agricultural communications major. This means that much of my academic career has been spent writing and speaking. While reading Chapter 8 of Telcomunications Today, I thought about what I did when I was preparing to write papers or speeches in the past. I certainly could have used some of the information shared about generes. Although this seems like a simple process, putting some serious though into what format you will use to convey a message can be the difference between your audience understanding and acting or not.

When I started reaching Chapter 8 of TCT there was one idea right out of the introduction stood out to me: “You need to organize the information… into patterns that are familiar to your readers” (TCT 180). Thinking about the way we view and transmit information, organization is important, and not just in writing applications.