Part 7: Writing Employment Messages and Interviewing for Jobs
This final part of the text is perhaps the most personally important to students: putting their
communication skills to work in pursuit of fulfilling jobs and successful careers. Chapter 18 addresses the
steps involved in planning a job search and developing a résumé, then Chapter 19 takes over with the
steps for applying for job openings, interviewing, and following up after the interview. If you didn’t have
students read the career-planning Prologue at the beginning of the course, now is a good time to do so.
Chapter 18: Building Careers and Writing Résumés
This chapter is the first of two on employment- and career-related communication. It offers a variety of
creative tips on finding opportunities in today’s job market, followed by comprehensive advice for
crafting an effective résumé for specific job openings.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Finding the Ideal Opportunity in Today’s Job Market
Writing the Story of You
Learning to Think Like an Employer
Researching Industries and Companies of Interest
Translating Your General Potential into a Specific Solution for Each Employer
Taking the Initiative to Find Opportunities
Building Your Network
Seeking Career Counseling
Avoiding Mistakes
Planning a Résumé
Analyzing Your Purpose and Audience
Gathering Pertinent Information
Selecting the Best Media and Channels
Organizing Your Résumé Around Your Strengths
The Chronological Résumé
The Functional Résumé
The Combination Résumé
Addressing Areas of Concern
Writing a Résumé
Keeping Your Résumé Honest
Adapting Your Résumé to Your Audience
Composing Your Résumé
Name and Contact Information
Introductory Statement
Education
Work Experience, Skills, and Accomplishments
Activities and Achievements
Personal Data and References
Completing a Résumé
Revising Your Résumé
Producing Your Résumé
Choosing a Design Strategy for Your Résumé
Considering Photos, Videos, Presentations, and Infographics
Producing a Traditional Printed Résumé
Printing a Scannable Résumé
Creating a Plain-Text File of Your Résumé
Creating a Word File of Your Résumé
Creating a PDF Version of Your Résumé
Creating an Online or Social Media Résumé
Proofreading Your Résumé
Distributing Your Résumé
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Finding the Ideal Opportunity in Today’s Job Market
Learning Objective 1: List eight key steps to finding the ideal opportunity in today’s job market.
Successful companies place a high priority on finding the right employees and the investments they are
willing to make in both personnel and technology to attract and keep valuable talent. Identifying and
landing the ideal job can be a long and difficult process, particularly in tough employment markets.
As you craft your personal strategy for finding the right job, keep these three guidelines in mind:
Get organized.
Start now and stick to it.
Look for stepping-stone opportunities if you can’t find the ideal job right now.
Writing the Story of You
Take the time you have now to explore the possibilities, to find your passion, and to identify
appealing career paths. These steps will help you start down the path:
Identify the nature of the work you’d like to do, if not a specific profession.
Begin writing the “story of you,” things you are passionate about, the skills you possess, your
ability to help an organization reach its goals, the path you’ve been on so far, and the path
you want to follow in the future.
Think in terms of an image or a theme you’d like to project.
Writing your story is a valuable planning exercise that helps you think about where you want to go
and how to present yourself to target employers.
Learning to Think Like an Employer
With every hiring decision, companies take great risks and need to prevent the following:
Hiring someone who doesn’t meet expectations
Letting a better candidate slip through their fingers
Many companies judge the success of their recruiting efforts by the quality of hire, a measure of how
closely new employees meet the company’s needs. Candidates are judged by:
Perceived ability to perform the job
Ability to handle responsibilities
Reliability
Motivation
Whether they “get it” when it comes to being a professional in today’s workplace
Class discussion question: How might employers and applicants view the recruiting process in different
ways? Why is it important to think like an employer when you are applying for jobs?
Researching Industries and Companies of Interest
Learning more about professions, industries, and individual companies is easy to do with the library
and online resources.
Companies are more likely to be impressed by creative research, such as interviewing their customers
to learn more about how the firm does business.
Seek out advice for online job searches as well as links to hundreds of specialized websites that post
openings in specific industries and professions.
To learn more about contemporary business topics, use these resources:
Leading business periodicals and newspapers with significant business sections
Bloggers, Twitter users, and podcasters offering news and commentary on the business world
Directories for blogs
People who write about topics of interest
This research will also help you get comfortable with the jargon and buzzwords currently in use in a
particular field—including essential keywords to use in your résumé.
Translating Your General Potential into a Specific Solution for Each Employer
Customizing your résumé to each job opening helps show employers that you will be a good fit for
the position.
From your initial contact through the interviewing process, you’ll have opportunities to impress
recruiters by explaining how your general potential translates to the specific needs of the position.
Taking the Initiative to Find Opportunities
When it comes to finding opportunities, the easiest ways are not always the most productive ones.
Major job boards and classified services such as Craigslist have thousands of openings—but many
thousands of job seekers are looking at and applying for these same openings.
Moreover, these job postings are often a company’s last resort, after exhausting other possibilities.
Instead of searching the same job openings as everyone else, take the initiative and find opportunities:
Identify the companies you want to work for.
Focus your efforts on them.
Get in touch with their human resources departments or individual managers (if possible).
Describe what you can offer the company.
Ask to be considered if any opportunities come up.
Building Your Network
Networking is the process of making informal connections with mutually beneficial business contacts.
Networking takes place wherever and whenever people communicate:
Industry functions
Social gatherings
Alumni reunions
All over the Internet
Networking is more essential than ever, because the vast majority of job openings are never
advertised to the general public.
The more people who know you, the better chance you have of being recommended for one of these
hidden job openings.
Start building your network now, before you need it. Here are some places to make contacts:
Classmates could end up being some of your most valuable contacts.
Identify people with similar interests in your target professions, industries, and companies.
Read news sites, blogs, and other online sources.
Follow industry leaders on Twitter.
Follow individual executives at your target companies to learn about their interests and
concerns.
Connect with people on LinkedIn and Facebook, particularly those dedicated to your career
interests.
Participate in student organizations, especially those with ties to professional organizations.
Visit trade shows to learn about various industries and meet people who work in those
industries.
Don’t overlook volunteering; you can demonstrate your ability to solve problems, manage
projects, and lead others.
Remember that networking is about people helping each other, not just about other people helping
you. Pay close attention to networking etiquette:
Learn something about the people you want to connect with.
Don’t overwhelm others with too many messages or requests.
Be succinct in all your communication efforts.
Don’t give out other people’s names and contact information without their permission.
Never email your résumé to complete strangers.
Don’t assume you can send your résumé to everyone you meet.
Remember to say thank you every time someone helps you.
To become a valued network member, you need to be able to help others in some way. The more you
network, the more valuable you become in your network—and the more valuable your network
becomes to you.
Be aware that your online network reflects on who you are in the eyes of potential employers, so
exercise judgment in making connections.
Seeking Career Counseling
College career centers offer a wide variety of services, including:
Individual counseling
Job fairs
On-campus interviews
Job listings
Advice on career planning
Workshops in job search techniques
Résumé preparation
Job readiness training
Interview techniques
Self-marketing
You can also find career planning advice online. Many of the websites offer articles and online tests
to help choose a career path, identify essential skills, and prepare to enter the job market.
Avoiding Mistakes
Take care to avoid the simple blunders that can torpedo a job search, such as:
Not catching mistakes in your résumé
Misspelling the name of a manager to whom you are writing
Showing up late for an interview
Tweeting something unprofessional
Failing to complete application forms correctly
Asking for information that you can easily find on a company’s website
Making any other error that could flag you as someone who is careless, clueless, or
disrespectful
As recruiters work to narrow down the possibilities, even a minor mistake on your part can give them
a reason to bump you right out of the candidate pool.
Section 2: Planning a Résumé
Learning Objective 2: Explain the process of planning your résumé, including how to choose the best
résumé organization.
Your résumé will be the most important document you create in a job search. Adapt it for a variety of
uses:
Personally delivered applications
E-portfolio and/or social media résumé
Social networking profiles
Online application forms
Writing a résumé really benefits from multiple planning, writing, and completing sessions spread out over
several days or weeks. You are trying to summarize a complex subject (yourself!) and present a
compelling story to complete strangers in a brief document.
Analyzing Your Purpose And Audience
A résumé is a structured summary of a person’s:
Education
Employment background
Job qualifications
Make sure you understand the true function of a résumé. It’s a brief, persuasive business message
intended to accomplish two objectives:
Stimulate an employer’s interest in you.
Get you an interview.
Learn as much as you can about the individuals who may be reading your résumé. Any bit of
information can help you craft a more effective message.
Gathering Pertinent Information
Gather all the pertinent personal history you can think of, including:
Dates, duties, and accomplishments from previous jobs you’ve held
Relevant educational experience—formal degrees, skill certificates, academic awards, or
scholarships
Relevant information about school or volunteer activities
Offices you have held in any club or professional organization
Presentations given
Online or print publications
Selecting the Best Media and Channels
You should expect to produce your résumé in several media and formats.
“Producing Your Résumé” discusses your options.
Organizing Your Résumé Around Your Strengths
Although you will see a number of ways to organize a résumé, most are:
Chronological
Functional
Combination of the two
The right choice depends on your background and your goals.
The Chronological Résumé
In a chronological résumé, the work experience section dominates and is placed immediately after
your contact information and introductory statement.
The chronological approach is the most common way to organize a résumé, and many employers
prefer this format because it presents your professional history in a clear, easy-to-follow
arrangement.
List your jobs in reverse chronological order, beginning with the most recent position and giving
the most space to the most recent positions. For each job, start by listing these facts:
The employer’s name and location
Your official job title
Dates you held the position (write “to present” if you are still in your most recent
position)
Highlight accomplishments in a way that is relevant to your readers
The Functional Résumé
A functional résumé, sometimes called a skills résumé, emphasizes your skills and capabilities,
identifying employers and academic experience in subordinate sections.
This arrangement stresses individual areas of competence rather than job history. The functional
approach also has three advantages:
Without having to read through job descriptions, employers can see what you can do for
them.
You can emphasize earlier job experience.
You can deemphasize any lengthy unemployment or lack of career progress.
Be aware that because the functional résumé can obscure your work history, many employment
professionals are suspicious of it. If the chronological format doesn’t work for you, consider the
combination résumé instead.
The Combination Résumé
A combination résumé meshes the skills focus of the functional format with the job history focus
of the chronological format.
The chief advantage of this format is that it allows you to focus attention on your capabilities
when you don’t have a long or steady employment history, without raising concerns that you
might be hiding something about your past.
Addressing Areas of Concern
Many people have gaps in their careers or other issues that could be a concern for employers. Here
are some common issues and suggestions for handling them in a résumé:
Frequent job changes. If you’ve had a number of short-term jobs of a similar type, group
them under a single heading. Reasonable employers understand that many professionals have
been forced to job hop by circumstances beyond their control.
Gaps in work history. Mention relevant experience and education you gained during
employment gaps, such as volunteer or community work.
Inexperience. Mention related volunteer work and membership in professional groups. List
relevant course work and internships.
Overqualification. Tone down your résumé, focusing exclusively on the experience and skills
that relate to the position.
Long-term employment with one company. Itemize each position held at the firm to show
both professional and career growth within the organization and increasing responsibilities
along the way.
Job termination for cause. Be honest with interviewers and address their concerns with proof,
such as recommendations and examples of completed projects.
Criminal record. You don’t necessarily need to disclose a criminal record or time spent
incarcerated on your résumé, but you may be asked about it on job application forms. If you
are asked and the question applies to you, you are legally bound to answer truthfully.