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Reading Response #1

RachB487's picture
Wed, 06/13/2007 - 22:07 — RachB487
After reading the material in the book, I think this course will be very beneficial. I expect to have to create a cover letter and resume using the guidelines listed on pages 224 through 231. The use of examples will be very helpful to me. Being mostly a visual learner, having an example of what a proper cover letter and resume looks like will be of much benefit to me. I also expect to learn how to write other documents properly, such as a memo, a white paper, a case analysis, and a recommendation report. A couple of things I really liked about the section on resumes were the portions titled “How Long Should a Resume Be?” and “Parts of a Typical Resume.” Those two portions answer many of the questions I have always had on the content of a resume. It tells you how to go about deciding what order to place the sections in and which sections to emphasize. When writing resumes in the past, I was never sure exactly what information to include and what to leave out. I think the information in the book will help me to write better resumes in the future. I hope that all of the projects and assignments in this course will be of use to me with future jobs. In addition to preparing a strong, clear resume and cover letter, it is also very important to be able to write other types of documents professionally. From what I have read so far, I think the Thompson Handbook will be an excellent reference tool. Everything so far has been cleary explained, making it very easy to understand and follow. The checklists and samples compliment the text well. I hope that the rest of the information in the textbook will be just as helpful, as it would be a great reference for future writing.

Comments

Wed, 06/13/2007 - 22:23 — mfaslam
mfaslam's picture

Resumes and Cover Letter

I think the guidelines given in the text can be very helpful in creating a good resume and cover letter. However, it is very important that you explore several formats which can be found on different websites before you choose what is best for you. At most your resume will be looked over at job fairs for 30 seconds and you should try your best to organize it in way that reflects your personality and the things important to you. Recruiters are always very interested knowing your personality and how it would fit in their respective organizations. I would recommend that it should not be in an extremely generic format as that increase the chances of it getting easily looked over.
Wed, 06/13/2007 - 22:43 — cmlinac
cmlinac's picture

Resumes and Cover Letter

I completely agree, using the tips in the text will make your resume and cover letter look very professional and will ensure they are written in the proper form. However if you follow exactly how the book tells you to write one, your resume or cover letter will look just like everyone else's who followed the outline in the book. You need to make your resume stand out so people will actually read over your resume instead of picking it up and just putting it back down without reading it in depth. This is one thing that i'm glad is in the book because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who don't really know how to write a proper resume and these tips will help them out tremendously.
Thu, 06/14/2007 - 17:43 — jtirrell
jtirrell's picture

RE:

Both of the comments above are right-on. You will have to make choices between conforming to standards and standing out. What we all want is a formula—just tell me how to make the perfect resume. Unfortunately, such a thing doesn't exist. Someone who tells you that it does will shortly thereafter also try to sell you the secret of how to create one. Whole careers have been made publishing books that claim to do this. The truth, such as it is, is that there will always be gray area about how your resume is going to be received. As with anything else, you will have to make some choices that may or may not work out the way you wanted. What we can do in this class is figure out how to reduce that gray area by honing our ability to discover and meet the needs of our audience and situation.

The instructor blog about resumes discusses this, as do many of our week 2 readings.

Thu, 06/14/2007 - 01:39 — stejani

Examples and checklists in the book

A lot of us in the class really like the book because of the way it’s written, the examples and the checklists make it much easier to write whatever you are trying to write. I like the way there is a rough draft given for the cover letter and then the final cover letter is shown. I also really like the way the job ad was discussed. It is starting to seem like all the pieces of how to apply for a job are falling in place with the help of this class, and it is even better we will learn to write documents for the company once we get the job.
Fri, 06/15/2007 - 23:11 — pstudtma
pstudtma's picture

reply

I agree completely you and the original blog; the book is very well written. I also am a very visual learner, and by viewing the examples in the book, I am able to compare my work. I really like the rough draft example you brought up. I like the way there was a list of qualities, then a rough draft, and then the final product was prepared. When following an example, I have gotten lost before. With the step by step thought process and the visual aids to accompany, I feel this book will be a great tool for our class.

Fri, 06/15/2007 - 21:36 — nlievens

Reply to Reading Response #1

I agree with your evaluation on the benefits this course offers. I also feel the sections about the length and typical parts of resumes will be very helpful. I have written resumes before, but I 've never been fully satisfied with them. I've been fortunate to acquire a lot of work experience but all the jobs are similar in nature. I'm not sure which jobs to include, or which ones to omit. I agree the book is clear and easy to follow. I like the fact it has lots of examples and not just continuous text.