Project #1: Resume and Cover Letter

Topic. You will create a resume and cover letter for a job posting in your field. You do not have to
submit these documents to the posting, but you should tailor your resume and cover letter for this
specific position.

Purpose: It is no secret that knowing how to write a resume and cover letter, and knowing how to
write them well, is a necessary skill for obtaining employment in the field you hope to enter.
Therefore, this assignment will ask you to research employment opportunities in your field and
create and design these documents for a specific job in that field. The resume will contain
information on your qualifications for a position, and a cover letter will elaborate on those
qualifications by stating why you, specifically, are the person for the job. While I do not ask you to
submit your resume and cover letter, you will be able to use them as a template as you apply for jobs
in the future.

Your Instructions:

For this assignment, you will research job postings for positions in your field and create a resume
and cover letter for a specific job. In addition to submitting the two documents you will create for
this assignment, you will also provide a screenshot of the posting you are responding to. For both
the resume and cover letter, you will follow the guidelines in Chapter 5 of your textbook, and you
may also consult examples posted in our course’s Learn page. For the resume, which will be no
more than one page, you must include:

 Header with name and contact information

o You may provide me with fake contact info, but you must provide your real name
 Short career objective
 Relevant educational and work background
 Skills relevant to the position
 A balanced design that is concise and readable

For the cover letter, you will include:

 Header with date and addresses of you and your potential employer
o As stated above, you may give me a fake address instead of your real address
 Introduction identifying the position you are applying for
 Descriptions of educational and work background
 Description of your relevant skills
 Conclusion that thanks your reader
Reflections. For this project, you will need to write a reflection accounting for your choices.
This reflection will help me evaluate and grade your project, so make sure you carefully consider
the following questions and answer ALL of the questions:

1. What is the purpose of the project you created and how do you think the piece
achieves its purpose?
2. Who is the audience? How did this affect your design choices?
3. What else would you like your instructor to know when evaluating this project?
Project SLOs:
By completing the assigned readings, activities, and assignments in this project unit, you will learn
the following SLOs for UNM professional writing. Think about these as you work through this unit,
reflecting on how they pertain to your coursework. Remember that you will have to write outcome
reflections for this project within your portfolio:

3. Content Development - Students come to understand how genre conventions impact writing
strategies, and use contextual information to place specialized information into an appropriate
technical genre.

5. Written Communication - Students compose clear prose that is stylistically responsible, avoids
errors, and pays attention to readability for audiences.

7. Reviewing and Editing - Across media and contexts, students learn informed stylistic choices,
text-revision for user-centeredness, and avoidance of common misspellings and mechanical errors.
 Grading Rubric:

Qualities Highly Effective Satisfactory Needs Further Unsatisfactory

Attention (2.3-0)
(4.0-3.6) (3.59-2.8)
(2.79-2.4)

Addresses Intended The writer clearly
Audience (10%) understands the needs
of the intended
audience and has
adapted the writing to
that audience.
The writer seems to
understand the needs of
the intended audience
but hasn’t fully adapted
the writing to
meet those needs.
The writer does The writer has
not demonstrate an made no attempt to
understanding of create a document
the needs of the with an audience
intended in mind.
audience.

Clear Sense of The writer’s purpose is The writer’s purpose is The writer needs to The writer has made
Purpose (10%) clear throughout the clear throughout most of clarify the purpose. no attempt to create
entire project. the project. a document with a
purpose in mind.
Format (30%) The writer has critically The writer has critically The writer has The writer has not
examined substantial examined some critically examined critically examined
information and has information and has some information any information;
used a relevant, logical presented used a relevant and used a information is not
format. and logical format. somewhat relevant relevant or logical.
and logical format.

The writer has presented The writer could present The writer needs to The writer has not
Content (30%) all required content some additional present much more presented any of the
information information required content

Conventions (10%) The writer has attended The writer has attended to The writer needs to The conventions or
to all the necessary most of the necessary attend to more of the errors of the
citations and citations and conventions. necessary citations document make the
conventions of writing. and conventions. text
incomprehensible.

Reflections (10%) Writer has written a Writer has attempted to Writer has made little The writer has made
reflection and accounted write a reflection but needs to no attempt to no attempt to reflect.
for his/her learning of to do more to account for reflect on course
the course outcomes, his/her learning of the outcomes.
using evidence from course outcomes, using
projects, peer review, evidence from projects,
discussion boards, etc to peer review, discussion
support the reflections. boards, etc. to support the
reflections.