#3: Job Application

20% of your final grade

Important Dates

  • Rough Draft for Peer Review: Monday, 10/28
  • Due Date: Monday, 11/04
  • Deadline: Monday, 11/11 (last day assignment will be accepted)

Step One: Find an Ad

  • Find a job listing that you are qualified for and want to apply for. You can browse online job announcements, newspapers, company websites, or trade journals to find potential jobs. You might try Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, or Hokies4Hire. See http://www.career.vt.edu/JobSearchGuide/AdvertisedJobs.html and pp. 24-32 of the VT Career Planning Guide for additional resources.
  • Save a copy of the job you will apply for as a PDF. You will need to turn in the job listing with your application materials.

Step Two: Your Resume and Cover Letter
Write a resume and cover letter for the job that you identified in step one. Your application materials should convince the company’s representative you are the best choice for the job. Research has shown that employers may only spend a minute or less scanning your resume, so you have to make it grammatically flawless and aesthetically appealing. 
 
There are two basic types of resumes: the chronological resume and the skills resume.  Choose the best type for your situation. A chronological resume is organized by time and used by people who don’t have extensive work experience.  This is the style most students choose. A skills resume is a good choice if you have a lot of professional work experience.  Skills resumes emphasize skills, knowledge and abilities and are typically somewhat field specific. See pp. 33-59 of the VT Career Planning Guide for additional resources.
 
Your cover letter is an argumentative sales document.  It gives you the opportunity to emphasize your specific accomplishments, describe any achievements, and express enthusiasm and interest in an opportunity.  Like a resume, or any professional writing for that matter, a cover letter should be free from error since you want to leave a positive impression on your potential employer. Try to focus your letter on what you can do for the employer rather than what the job will do for you.  Also, show that you are knowledgeable of the company or business. Prove that you’ve done your homework.  A resume should quantify your experiences, whereas a cover letter should qualify them in detail. See p. 64 and p. 67 of the VT Career Planning Guide for additional resources.
 
Length: Ideally, each document will be 1 page long. Neither should be more than 2 pages long.

Step Three:  Your Analysis Memo
Write me a persuasive memo (no longer than 1 page) about your job application that outlines any information I should know before reading your assignment. Compose your memo in the submission box on this page. The usual headings for a memo are to, from, subject, and date. You can add a divider line before your message as well.
 
Your memo should explain
·       Anything special you have assumed about your audience.
·       Anything unusual about your application or how you approached it.
·       Any decisions you made about leaving something out or adding extra information.
·       Anything I need to know about the images or other resources that you used.
·       Any decisions you made about formatting that you want to be sure that I understand.

Submission
Save your job listing, resume, and cover letter as “Lastname-Firstname-Asgt3.pdf” (for instance, my file would be named “Gardner-Traci-Asgt3.pdf”) and add it as an attachment to the assignment.

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