• ↓ Table of Contents

CREATING PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Keywords: resume, cover letter, professional profile, career

Course outcomes addressed: Analyze the audience, purpose, and context of technical communication projects, including cultural and ethical considerations; create technical documents of varied genres to solve practical problems; write effective technical prose.

• ↓ The Communication Problem
• ↓ Rationale of the Communication Problem

Deliverables

1. Document Plan

A document plan analyzes your audience and justifies the decisions that you make as you plan and develop your deliverables. (For guidance in developing your document plan, review The Agile Communicator, Chapter 3 (pp. 68-72).

<aside> 💡 There is a sample document plan on page 71 of the textbook, but DO NOT COPY IT. It is not in memo format, and the User Analysis does not adequately describe the user or the use case. Use my requirements below as the barometer for your document. I expect the User Analysis section to be more focused on the user (e.g., who they are, what role they have in the company, where they will be when they interact with your documents, what device they will use to look at it) than the textbook example shows.

</aside>

Requirements for a B

• When uploading your Document Plan in Blackboard, include a link to a specific job in your field that you will (in theory) be applying for with the résumé, cover letter, and LinkedIn Profile you create for Unit 1. (The job should be a position you are either currently qualified for or one you will be qualified for upon graduation. You do NOT have to actually apply. It just gives you context for creating the job-application materials you will be working on during this unit.)

• Use memo format. Here is an example shell of a document plan in memo format (you can change fonts and styles to suit your preferences; this just gives you an idea of what I'm expecting):

  Document-Plan-Basic.docx

• Include these sections:

  1. Overview, which contains:
     • problem statement and/or the purpose of the documents you will be creating for this unit
     • overview of deliverables/solutions
  2. User Analysis, which contains:
     • relevant characteristics of the users who will see your deliverables (e.g., their role in the company, their age, their knowledge of the field)
     • at least one use scenario for the deliverables (e.g., where they will be when looking at your documents, what device they will use to look at them, what their attention level is, what stage in the hiring process they will be in)
  3. Tasks and Schedule, which contains:
     • list of the tasks and subtasks involved (e.g., research, drafting, and the steps it takes to go from start to completion for the project)
     • a timeline for completing this project in the form of a Gantt chart or an Excel prioritized list
  4. Resource Allocation, which contains:
     • list of people and resources needed to complete this project

Requirements for an A

• Meet all of the criteria for a B.
• In the User Analysis section, cite at least two external sources that helped you understand the potential users of your résumé, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile in APA format.
• An additional References section, formatted in APA Style, which contains:
  • the two sources you referenced in the User Analysis section
  • two sources you found that provided examples of job-application materials (like sample résumés, cover letters, or professional portfolios) or helped you understand what job-application materials should include or look like in your field. (Pages from our course website or textbook do not count. Find sources beyond our class texts.)