[ATTW-L] Teaching the resume

Wed Nov 7 22:04:50 UTC 2018

Hello All,

It's great to see this active interest in how resumes fit into the professional and technical communication service course, as my research has been moving to ground conventional approaches to teaching resumes in empirical data. Thank you for the shout-out, Greg Wilson!

Along with Randazzo's thoughtful work on resumes (her piece on where students seek advice for writing resumes is especially useful. DOI: 10.1080/10572252.2016.1221142), I also recommend Fillenwarth, et al.'s 2018 article on how students present engineering discourse in their resumes (DOI: 10.1109/TPC.2017.2747338).

Like Willis' previous email that points out the skills that resume writing teaches students, my research interest in resumes (and cover letters) is grounded in the premise that resumes are a microcosm of the skills and learning that students need in professional and technical service, or introductory, courses. Although we often teach about resumes and discuss their learning outcomes, I've found a need for research that examines how common genres like resumes are being taught--this type of research is especially important for training instructors new to professional and technical communication. At the moment, I'm in the middle of a 25 instructor study to understand how instructors enact their pedagogical goals by giving feedback on students' resumes and cover letters. Here's a link to a short paper that I presented at IEEE ProComm this summer, further outlining my methodology and rationale for this resume research: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8476852

Although I'm in the middle of coding data from the first 10 instructors who participated, I have two preliminary findings to share:

  1.  Pedagogical goals: These instructors really want students to be able to communicate well after taking the service course, but sometimes struggle to articulate what "communicating well" looks like beyond audience, purpose, or document design.
  2.  Resume feedback: These instructors think a lot about purpose and audience when discussing resumes and cover letters; however, a majority of their comments focus on lower-order concerns surrounding style, grammar, and mechanics. At this point, instructors' feedback on students' resumes seems to mostly focus on helping students get a job; I'm still looking for examples of comments that focus on higher-order skills or knowledge transfer.

At this point, I'm still recruiting eight more instructors for this study, sponsored by the C.R. Anderson Grant from the Association for Business Communication. If you have at least 5 years of experience teaching professional and technical communication, teach resumes and cover letters, and are willing to share your feedback on students' de-identified resumes and cover letters, please feel free to email me at saradoan at uwm.edu. Here is a link to the informed consent form: http://saracdoan.com/index.php/research/dissertation/

I'm happy to discuss the study or answer any questions off-list, too.

All my best,

Sara Doan

Sara C. Doan, MA
PhD Candidate | Dept. of English | Professional and Technical Writing
Curtin Hall 508 | UW - Milwaukee | saracdoan.com

________________________________
From: ATTW-L <attw-l-bounces at attw.org> on behalf of Derek Ross <derek.ross at auburn.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 2:26:18 PM
To: attw-l at attw.org
Subject: Re: [ATTW-L] Teaching the resume

Hi All:

Great thread. I’ve got a piece in Godwin Agboka and Natalia Matveeva’s book on resume design that might be of interest:

Ross, D. G. (2018). Résumé design and career advocacy in a Goodwill Career Center. In G. Agboka and N. Matveeva (Eds.), Citizenship and Advocacy in Technical Communication: Scholarly and Pedagogical Perspectives. New York, NY: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Citizenship-and-Advocacy-in-Technical-Communication-Scholarly-and-Pedagogical/Agboka-Matveeva/p/book/9781138560802

I overview what most of the textbooks say to do, and discuss a series of interviews, surveys, etc. from both the HR and job seeker side of things. Lots of fun charts, and some interesting stuff putting it all together with Social Network Analysis. Here’s an overview paragraph from my methods:

My intent in conducting research on perceptions of résumés was to determine where potential job seeker and potential employer expectations might differ, and to establish how technical communication professionals volunteering in career services organizations might best serve our communities. To answer my research questions, I conducted semi-structured interviews with two key personnel at a Goodwill Career Center, conducted surveys with visitors to the Career Center seeking help with résumé design, worked with Goodwill’s own research into what employers look for in effective job applications and résumés, and considered my own observations and experiences as a volunteer with Goodwill. This multi-part approach allowed me to gain a more robust picture of perceptions of resumes than if I had used only one approach with one demographic. It also allowed me to make connections between perceptions and descriptions offered by potential employers, employees, and professional communicators. (pp. 178 – 79)

Take care,

Derek

Derek G. Ross

Editor, Communication Design Quarterly<https://sigdoc.acm.org/publication/>

Department of English, 9030 Haley Center
Auburn University, AL 36849-5203

334-844-9073

http://www.derekross.com<http://www.derekross.com/>

Pronouns: he/him/his

From: ATTW-L <attw-l-bounces at attw.org> on behalf of "Susan Rauch, PhD" <susan.rauchttu at gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 1:09 PM
To: "geoffrey.clegg at gmail.com" <geoffrey.clegg at gmail.com>
Cc: "attw-l at attw.org" <attw-l at attw.org>
Subject: Re: [ATTW-L] Teaching the resume

Hi All,

Great topic of discussion!!!

I was also going to reference Chalice's work, and Richard also made a good point about the scannable resume - something that is useful to have on hand with those nasty electronic app systems that don't want to read a nicely "designed" resume.

When I teach the resume and job letter, the resume is taught in three parts. Students start with a somewhat clean RTF document for organization of content that is converted into and crosschecked with a  plain-text document. This is their first draft before creating a more visually appealing resume using tables (although that can get a bit wonky especially in scannable systems, or if alt text is not used for accessibility) e.g. infographic for some of my mass comm/viz comm students. I then teach a visual resume using some of Duarte's principles of Slidedoc that is viewable in SlideShare that represents and expands on the personality traits of the letter and resume. This is inclusive of "only" 5-6 sections so it should not be more than 7-10 pages with a cover slide and closing remarks. They share this link in their letterhead which is very useful at job fairs. This is not meant to replace the traditional resume, but some students have received second looks, interviews, and hires after attending job fairs where employers may receive and have to sift through 50-100 resumes.

But I again agree with most that the traditional resume is still very important. What I found interesting and frustrating is that other departments across disciplines and even career center advisors teach the resume and its organizational parts differently, as Chalice's research will indicate. While I understand some industries require certain components, that is not what I am referring to i.e. are still teaching the generic "blanket" Objective statement which many industry professionals will say they don't want to see rathermost say to include a more personalized career profile or statement that is tailored to the job (preface: some industries will want to see the Objective, but on the norm it is not necessary nor is the blaket References upon request at the bottom). What is frustrating is students feel a bit overwhelmed with the different variations that different departments are teaching across disciplines. I don't have an answer specifically for how to overcome the inconsistency of how style is taught or advised across discipline and among career advisors, but as someone else mentioned Chalice has done some good and relevant research on the topic, and I helped her transcribe some of her interviews from her research a while back which was eye opening.

I do tell students to follow their industry's preferences and we do research on that in class. I also suggest if they need a digital portfolio such as my Viz Comm students, to add a Portfolio Available statment at the bottom of the resume. References are a given and takes up line space,and most employers will either ask for it in the app system or after an interview (unless indicated otherwise in the job post) and should be available either in another document to add into the online app.

Anyhow, the supplemental digital visual resume seems to work well for my students if designed well. This is not meant to serve in the same way as a portfolio of documents (although students may add a portfolio section at the end ) nor is it like LinkedIn.

The only glitch I see is that students have a hard time getting past the PPT as a drafting tool with the Slidedoc template, which is not meant to be used as a oral presentation tool with larger fonts. I get this with the digital reflective portfolio too when students use the Slidedoc in this same way. It is a great option though if used correctly in conjunction with SlideShare and a private share link as a branding tool to supplement the job search materials. Note: There are some really wonky Slideshare resumes out there that are poorly designed and exceedingly lengthy, which have been the basis for a good classroom discussion/workshop and possibly online discussion forum analysis topic.

Kind regards,

Susan Rauch, PhD

Lecturer, Professional Writing (science and technology)

Course Coordinator, Communicating in the Sciences

Massey University

Palmerston North, New Zealand

s.rauch at massey.ac.nz<mailto:s.rauch at massey.ac.nz>

On Thu, Nov 8, 2018 at 4:59 AM Geoff Clegg <geoffrey.clegg at gmail.com<mailto:geoffrey.clegg at gmail.com>> wrote:

I'm mostly business communication these days so my focus is a bit skewed. One of the issues around the resume that I cover concerns design. Far too many of my students use templates that get rejected by ATS (applicant tracking systems) software. We focus on the importance of information, not using graphical templates, and using key terms of from the job ads. We do, however, talk about the needs of international job applications, how a career fair resume can use different designs than one submitted electronically, and the importance of the rhetorical value of a resume in combination with a cover letter and interview.

Geoff

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 9:52 AM Blackburne, Brian <bdb026 at shsu.edu<mailto:bdb026 at shsu.edu>> wrote:

Hi, Mark,

In addition to the useful resources posted by Rebecca and Lisa, I’ve observed, anecdotally, that CVs and résumés are still as important as they once were. In industry-related contexts, I find that potential clients/employers still like to see a traditional résumé, and in academic contexts, the CV is invariably required for applications; what’s more, many hiring committees are expressly forbidden from using LinkedIn or other social platforms to research/evaluate candidates. Such sources often hold information that shouldn’t be considered in job searches (e.g., sex, race, political affiliations, gender identity, attractiveness, etc.) and could potentially bias those conducting the search. I do think that we must help students create effective job materials across all genres/media, but I tend to focus on the résumé as the go-to document while helping students consider how their online personas may affect their searches when potential employers do google them or even ask for social-media handles as an explicit part of the search process.

The topic is a fun one to teach. Enjoy!

BB

Brian D. Blackburne, Ph.D.

(Pronouns: he, him, & his)

Sam Houston State University

Director | Technical Communication

Associate Professor | Department of English

Treasurer | Association of Teachers of Technical Writing

BrianBlackburne at shsu.edu<mailto:BrianBlackburne at shsu.edu>

936-294-3359

From: ATTW-L <attw-l-bounces at attw.org<mailto:attw-l-bounces at attw.org>> on behalf of Mark Crane <craniac at gmail.com<mailto:craniac at gmail.com>>
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 8:43 AM
To: "attw-l at attw.org<mailto:attw-l at attw.org>" <attw-l at attw.org<mailto:attw-l at attw.org>>
Subject: [ATTW-L] Teaching the resume

Hi,

I was wondering if you teach resume creation (and by extension, branding one's self and tools like LinkedIn) in your introductory courses, and if so, if you have any suggestions for doing this in a way that is supported by existing research.  My own sense is that resumes, although important, seem to be less important than they once were.

We'll be collecting research about resume writing and the semantics of electronic resume filtering processes in class today, but I thought I would "drink above the horses" as it were and ask the experts as well.

_______________________________________________
ATTW-L mailing list
ATTW-L at attw.org<mailto:ATTW-L at attw.org>
http://attw.org/mailman/listinfo/attw-l_attw.org

--

Geoffrey Clegg, PhD | Assistant Professor of English

English Department
Midwestern State University

Wichita Falls, TX 76308

geoffrey.clegg at mwsu.edu<mailto:geoffrey.clegg at mwsu.edu>

geoffrey.clegg at gmail.com<mailto:geoffrey.clegg at gmail.com>

_______________________________________________
ATTW-L mailing list
ATTW-L at attw.org<mailto:ATTW-L at attw.org>
http://attw.org/mailman/listinfo/attw-l_attw.org

--

Kind Regards,

Susan Rauch, Ph.D.

Massey University, NZ

susan.rauchttu at gmail.com<mailto:susan.rauchttu at gmail.com>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://attw.org/pipermail/attw-l_attw.org/attachments/20181107/7092cbc6/attachment-0002.htm>