Resumes and other Written Materials for a Job Search part 1

Resumes and Other Written Materials for a Job Search
(1) No ONE way to write a resume or a cover letter
(a) Purpose of writing a resume and a cover letter is to get an interview
(b) Guides offer ADVICE
(c) Common sense be your guide as you write advertisements for yourself
(2) Managers agreed that:
(a) Looked at resumes and cover letters
(b) Sometimes scanned an applicant’s application materials
To determine as quickly as possible who to interview

Application Materials:
(1) Preparation and experience candidates had in the following skills and areas
(a) Written and oral communication skills
(b) Computer skills
(c) Interpersonal skills, as demonstrated by the ability to work as a member of a team
(d) Self-reliance and initiative, as demonstrated by the ability to work alone
(e) A sense of what the world of work demands in terms of professionalism and deadlines
(f) Specific skills in at least one business or technical area supplemented by secondary skills in a variety of related areas
(g) A sense of business and personal ethics
(h) The ability to manage time, set priorities, and work under stress

Writing Resumes and Letters in the Language of Employers
(1) Employers read with one though in mind: What can the candidates do for us?
(Why use a Resume?)
(2) Message of Resume: “I have something to offer you.”
(3) Marketing Rule: Don’t confuse customers by flaunting things that don’t speak to their needs.
(Giving your Message)
(4) Language
(a) Employers – “I need”
(b) You – “I want”
(5) Trying to get an interview is like school work (You have to do your research / study). Make sure you know what the industry you are going to needs and looks for. Try to get others in the same industry to review your resume and tell you what the industry needs.
(6) Old Message: How do you stand out? Why should I hire you?
(The Importance of Knowing what the Job is all About)
(7) A need for people to get things done (realistically)
(8) Teach me is a passive solution (and a problem) – the idea is “I want to contribute”
(Letters of Application)
(9) Good letters have this in common
(a) Looked like business letters. Paragraphing, neatness, and white 8 ½ in x 11 in stationary
(b) Succinct
(c) No misspellings or grammatical errors
Layout of a good Letter
Paragraph:
(1) First paragraph stated who the writer was and what he wanted
(2) 2 – 4 paragraphs explain why the writer wrote to the employer and mentioned areas of mutual interest, special talents that might be of interest to employers, or other factors relating to qualifications that could be better described in a letter than in a resume
(3) Final paragraph suggested a course of action
(Hard Work and Attention to Detail Make for a Good Letter)
(10) Print is letter quality
(11) Get someone to check for spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors (like an English teacher)
(Don’t Delegate the Job of Letter Writing)
(12) The value of a resume is frequently more in its preparation than in its use.
(Resume Preparation)
(13) Make resume a testimony to your ability to organize your thoughts
(Nancy Jones – A Good Resume Made Better)
(14) Summary – Emphasize related subjects with double spacing while single spacing non impressive subjects or stuff you hope they will miss
(Janet Smith – The Proper Use of Headlines)
(15) Summary – What you did not where you did it
(Mark Meyers – The Functional Resume)
(16) Summary – Feature functions of the job he wanted and then describe things he had done that pertained to each area.
(Preparing a Resume for a Specific Job)
(17) Summary – Make resume appeal to each particular employer (and write courses and activities that pertain to the degree they want in hopes of them accepting it)
(Bruce Gregory Robertson – A Resume Reflecting an Active Mind and Body)
(Michelle Trio – The Curriculum Vitae)
(18) Latin for “course of life”
(The Job Objective)
(19) Summary - don’t state the objective – show it with your credentials ( Don’t agree)
(One Page or Two?)
(20) Summary – as long as you need to
(Additional Advice about Resumes)
(21) Show critics a resume without telling them it’s yours and ask:
(a) What qualifications does this person have?
(b) What do you see this person doing with these qualifications?
(c) What kind of an employer would want to hire this person?
(d) Does the resume project an image of a certain kind of person and what kind?
(22) In other words: “What message do you get about me?”

Notes:
(1) Do not pad your resume with false statements
(2) First Impression is Last Impression <= Saying
(3) Imagine trying to impress a girl / boy you really like. What would you do to get their attention?
(4) What is a secretarial manual?
(5) Anybody else find the final paragraph of the good letter a little too presumptious?

Multimedia Content

Regardless on whether it's on video or PowerPoint, the idea of this would be to convince experienced divers that they are more at risk than ever.

The ad proceeds:

(1)Show the tropical ocean, the relaxation, the group bonding, and the pictures and videos from deep in the ocean.

(2)Tell experienced divers that they can go to these places, but first they need to take a refresher course in order to minimize the accidents. The refresher course they need can be found in The Physics of Scuba Diving with pictures to accommodate the theories.

(3)Tell experienced divers they are now ready to go diving deep into the ocean. Reshow some of the wonderful places and organisms (yes people included) that they can see.

(4)Tell them to remember what they learned from the book and to return safely.

Note: Videos and pictures will be found on the internet. (probably youtube)Also possible to get underwater pictures and video from the local diving school in Clemson that I took scuba diving with.

Nazi Records - Dombrowski - Ch 4

Nazi Records: The Origin and Use of Information
- Emotional disengagement of the researcher from the human research subject, and the implicit superiority of the researcher by which the subject is deliberately kept in the dark about what is really going on.
- Technical communicators and technical documents produced are not ethically neutral

Origination, Dissemination, and Use of Information
- Values of Nazi Medical Science
- Objectivization
- Impersonalness
- Emotional disengagement

“Research” Information
- Nothing ventured, nothing gained: does not apply to human research

Values in Nazi Medical “Science”
- Traditional View
- Justifying actions by looking at the big picture
- Masked Language
- “Euthanasia” reinterpreted as putting someone to death in a way that is perceived as humane and on the basis of their unworthiness to live

Means and ends could ethically taint technical information we are dealing with.

Kant – sentient beings should be treated alike and is more essential than bare humanness in deciding ethical responsibility.

Nazi Technical Memorandum
- What we can do, we should do, largely because we can do it. Circular logic and values

Graphical Images
-

Ethical Appraisal
- Aristotelian perspective
- condemns Nazi regime based on virtue and cultivated ethics
- argue to use technical information for potential benefit of others
- Kantian perspective
- condemns Nazi regime for not treating all sentient beings equal (ethics)
- if one were to benefit (yes)
- if one was a victim (no)
- Utilitarianism
- according to the book – no one knows because they did not think of this circumstance
- however they would probably condemn the regime
- in favor of communication
- Feminist and Ethics of Care
- condemn Nazi regime because of authoritarian government
- recommended to share findings

So if all the theorists’ say yes, why do we not use the information.

Conclusion: This chapter does a great job of telling us why to not treat subjects with objectivity and distance ourselves from them. It gives you the consequence of doing so; however, it fails to take into account the fact that the technical writers did not have much of a choice in Nazi Germany. You either cooperated with your government or you and your family died. Simple as that. So book neglects to tell you when it would be appropriate to do so, if at all.

Ethics Tradition Dombrowski

Aristotle:
(1) perspective: virtue and personal character
(2) explains basic notions: ex. goodness, truth, justice, and rightness
(3) standards of guiding ethical determinations

Kant:
(1) duty or obligation based on fundamental universal principle
(2) principle can be figured out rationally
(3) ethics can be understood by all people
(4) doing the right thing because it is right regardless of consequences

Utilitarianism:
(1) socially desirable course (weighs cost and benefits)
(2) tries to be fair by being impersonal
(3) treats people like interchangeable parts in machinery
(4) unresponsive to individual feelings or interests
(5) government agencies take this approach in an effort to be impartial

Which ethics code or combination do you follow? What situations do you use what? What decides that?

Mark Wicclair and David Farkas:
distinguish ethics from relativistic, self-interested approaches, the law, and religion
3 types of ethical principles:
(1) goal based (utilitarianism)
(2) duty based (kant)
(3) rights based

Aristotle:
Ethics is a subject that does not allow hard and fast answers like mathematics
Making practical and concrete the abstract, metaphysical thinking of his teacher Plato
St Thomas Aquinas - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/#A4
Ethics is about what is sought for goodness itself
Ethics derives from reason
Ethical behavior must be deliberated, actively weighed, and chosen for its own sake
One is does not behave virtuously by nature (contrary to Catholic Church: we just have many temptations)
How does this relate to today?
Some of us think that we can behave ethically occasionally and take the easy way out the rest of the way. Aristotle would question the motives of the person doing so.
Scientists distance themselves to pursue fuller truths (like philosophers of old) that are hidden to the ordinary person
Cousteau, Sagan, and religious priests throughout the ages: they speak to us not as an individual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques-Yves_Cousteau#Defense_of_the_environment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Scientific_advocacy
Kant:
Ethical system is based on a sense of duty
Ex. World War II
Humans are endowed with moral reason fundamental ethical principle, the categorical imperative: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal Law of Nature.
"Theory of duty is founded on the radically autonomous free will and its capacity to choose otherwise and on its reasoned self-persuasion not to choose otherwise. It is duty based in freedom. Whereas, we usually think of a duty as an onerous burden and a limitation of our freedom.
Another categorical imperative: “Act so that in your own person as well as in the person of every other you are treating mankind also as an end, never merely as a means.”
As a end? What does that mean?
Does this mean we can still treat mankind as a means as long as we treat them as an end?
Ex of treating mankind as a means: Nazi technology, making a promise as a lie

Gilligan:
Moral judgments made by women based on greater concern on feelings and welfare of others. Flexible approach to judgments that weighed contingencies
Men make a rigid insistence on impersonal rules of justice regardless of feeling and contingency
Given brief, objective description of each person
Ex. Medical board of three heart donors and 10 people in need of heart transplants
Should decisions be based on past, should we give leeway for change, would we want to be judged by our past?

Postmodernism seeks to replace modernistic attitudes and values and to rectify their negative effects

Science:
Men isolate each part
Women see the whole organism
Feminists believe we need to create an economy that gives a win-win situation and not a Darwinian male environment where the strongest survive.
Evolution of the economy as worked in the past. Point of view on bailout bill? Is it a win-win situation?

“joystick”, “cockpit”, “male and female couplings” Your take on it? I see it as words that are no longer associated with male or female. There is a reason why couplings are called male and female. The same reason in my opinion why the cpu is called the master while the memory is called the slave.

Confucian ethics:
Grounded in immediate realities not timeless absolutes
Human responsibilities as being constituted in relationships
Real world is the stage where morality is really played out
One’s behavior towards others (explains social code in countries like china and japan)
Virtue does not come from logic or reasoning but from examples of what others have done in the past
Ren, li, ye
Sense of human being related to others, traditional rituals, conscious reenactment of the fundamental sense of righteousness
Accept where you are and make the best out of it (ex. Japanese)
Eastern (Tradition). Western (Innovation) (Ex. Guns in Japan, Bushido Code)

Levinas:
Ethics is human nature in relation to others

Gert:
Morality involves actions, social relations, and avoidance of evil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
No exit

Short Short Draft

1.1 Blood
Blood is a tissue that circulates in a closed circuit known as the circulatory system. A person that weighs 70 kg has 5 to 6 liters of blood which represents about 10% of the total body weight.
Blood is made of:
• A liquid:
o blood plasma
• Solids:
o red and white blood cells
o platelets

The red blood cells are shaped like biconcave disks and number between 4 to 5 million per cubic millimeter. A red blood cell contains 70% water and 30% hemoglobin. The key property of hemoglobin is to bind with gas into an unstable combination. Oxygen (O) is taken at the level of the lungs through a process called oxyhemoglobin and later released in the different tissues of the body. At this point, the hemoglobin charges itself with carbon dioxide (CO2) through a process called carboxyhemoglobin. The carboxyhemoglobin will go to the lungs and release the carbon dioxide in the process of re-oxygenation.
The blood is a lighter shade of red if it contains more oxyhemoglobin and is a darker shade of red if it contains more carboxyhemoglobin.
The hemoglobin can also combine with other gases such as carbon monoxide (CO) to create a very stable combination which can lead to asphyxia since the hemoglobin can no longer carry oxygen. This is why it is critical to protect the air intake for the compressor from exhaust gases that come from cars, boats, and the compressor itself.

1.2 Boyle-Mariotte Law
1.2.1 Experimental test

At 1 bar of pressure, the volume under the piston is 1 liter
At 2 bars of pressure, the volume under the piston is 0.5 liters
At 3 bars of pressure, the volume under the piston is 0.33 liters
At 4 bars of pressure, the volume under the piston is 0.25 liters
1.2.2 Law
At constant temperature, the variation of the volume, V, of a gas is inversely proportional to the absolute pressure
p1 x V1 = p2 x V2
where either p1 x V1 or p2 x V2 is held constant
1.2.3 Application to diving

A balloon which has a volume of 8 liters at the surface will have a volume:
4 liters at -10 meters since absolute pressure is 2 bars
2 liters at -30 meters since absolute pressure is 4 bars
1 liter at -70 meters since absolute pressure is now 8 bars

3 important applications are worth mentioning.

1.2.3.1 Lungs Volume
The lungs contain 6 liters of air at the surface. The diver receives air pressurized to the surrounding pressure from the regulator i.e. the absolute pressure at which the diver finds him/herself. At 30 meters the pressure is 4 bars. At 30 meters the volume of gas contained in the lungs is 4 x 6 = 24 liters, which is the volume the air would take at the surface. When the diver goes back up to the surface, the pressure becomes smaller and consequently, the volume of air will increase. Therefore it is important to breathe normally and exhale to let the air contained in the lungs out and avoid submitting the lungs to an expansion from the large internal pressure versus the external pressure.

1.2.3.2 Diving time
A diver takes a 12 liter tank inflated at 200 bars with a reserve calibrated at 30 bars. Knowing that the diver breathes at a rate of 16 breaths per minute at the surface and inhales 1 liter per breath, how long can the diver stay at a depth of 20 meters and 50 meters?

Starting point
Consumption at the surface is 16 x 1 = 16 liters per minute
Number of liters available in the tank is 200 x 12 = 2,400 liters
Number of liters earmarked is 30 x 12 = 360 liters
When the diver reaches the reserve air, the diver must go back to the surface or risk running out of air
The available amount of air for diving is equal to the total number of liters minus the reserve liters
2,400 – 360 = 2,040 liters of air available for diving

At 20 meters
The absolute pressure is 3 bars.
The consumption is 16 x 3 = 48 liters per minute because the diver consumes 3 liter at every breath (Mariotte Law)
Diving time = 2,040 / 48 = 42 minutes

At 50 meters
The absolute pressure is 6 bars.
The consumption is 16 x 6 = 96 liters per minute because the diver consumes 6 liters at every breath (Mariotte Law)
Diving time = 2,040 / 96 = 21 minutes

“The greater the depth, the shorter the dive”

1.2.3.3 Floatability
The diver uses lead weights to fight the buoyancy of his/her diving suit and BC (Buoyancy Compensator). When the diver goes back up, the pressure reduces and the volume of the air in the BC increases which increases the Archimedes force and increases the speed at which the diver goes up. A potentially dangerous situation (see decompression below)
As a rule of thumb the diver must always remember to go as slow as the slowest bubbles.

Part 2 of Part 4 of the Harty Reading

Questions to ask when including a visual:
Why include your visual?
Is the information in your visual accurate?
"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.""
- Autobiography of Mark Twain
Is your visual focused?
Are terms and symbols in your visual defined and consistent?
Does your visual specify measurements and distances?
Is the lettering readable?
Is the caption clear?
Is there a figure or table number?
Is a list of figures or tables needed?
Are figures or tables needed?
Are figure or table numbers referred to in your text?
Are visuals appropriately placed?
Do visuals stand out from the surrounding text?

Elements included in a table:
Table number
Table title
Boxhead
Stub
Body
Rules
Source line
Footnotes
Continuing tables

You have to have sources or a credit line when reprinting a graph or using data printed to create your own graph.

Visuals are necessary because some of your audience may be visual learners. In addition, your audience will obtain a greater understanding of your speech by including visuals. Nonexperts require a lengthier explanation than experts do as a rule. Visuals aid in determining the correlation between data.

Rules every persuader should know:
1. Consider whether your views will make problems for readers
2. Don’t offer new ideas, directives, or recommendations for change until your readers are prepared for them
3. Your credibility with readers affects your strategy
4. If your audience disagrees with your ideas or is uncertain about them, present both sides of the argument
5. Win respect by making your opinion or recommendation clear
6. Put your strongest points last if the audience is very interested in the argument, first if it is not so interested
7. Don’t count on changing attitudes by offering information alone
8. “Testimonials” are most likely to be persuasive if drawn from people whom readers associate
9. Be wary of using extreme or “sensational” claims and facts
10. Tailor your presentation to the reasons for readers’ attitudes, if you know them
11. Never mention other people without considering their possible effect on the reader
Ex. Bush exclaiming that China should be more like Taiwan a day before he was to visit China

Why did public opinion towards the war in Iraq drop so quickly?

Politicians use which of the above rules of persuasion when running for office. Which do they not use or disobey?

Mr. Drye, a stand up comedian and COMM 250 professor, comments that part of public speaking (especially after dinner) is getting to know your audience. Dinner is not a time to enjoy but a time to prepare and to get to know your audience.

Guidelines for writing a successful proposal
1. Approach writing a proposal as a problem-solving activity
2. Regard your audience as skeptical readers
3. Research your proposal carefully
4. Prove that your proposal is workable
5. Be sure that your proposal is financially realistic
6. Package your proposal attractively

How many of the guidelines did you follow when writing your own respective proposals?

The organization of an internal proposal
The introduction
Background of the problem
The solution or plan
The conclusion

Sales proposal questions:
Does the writer’s firm understand our problem?
Can the writer’s firm deliver what it promises?
Can the job be completed on time?
What assurances does the writer offer that the job will be done exactly as
proposed?

Organization of a Sales Proposal
Introduction
Statement of purpose and subject of proposal
Background of the problem you propose to solve
Description of the proposed product or service
Carefully show your potential customers that your product or service is
right for them.
Describe your work in suitable detail – what it looks like, what it does, and
how consistently well it will perform its job
Stress any special features, maintenance advantages, warranties, or service benefits
Timetable
Costs
Qualifications of your company
Conclusion

Our project proposal was a sales proposal.

Guidelines for writing plain sentences
1. The subject should be what the sentence is about
2. Make the “doer” the subject. Subject is the “doer”
3. State the action in the verb
4. Put the subject early in the sentence
5. Eliminate nominalizations
6. Avoid excessive prepositional phrases
7. Eliminate redundancy
8. Make sentences “breathing length”

IN SHORT “KISS” – KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

The elements of a paragraph
Transition sentence
Topic sentence
Support sentences
Point sentences

Align sentences in a paragraph
The Given/New method – write something the readers already know into each sentence of every paragraph

Passive Voice is appropriate in scientific and technical proposals because who will be doing what is not always predictable.