Business Writing

English 3130 040 CRN 83895 Minimester 1 Fall 2008

Résumé & Cover Letter Peer Critiques

This is worth 2 participation grades (10 points).

This assignment allows you to critically look at your peer's work. This is especially important with the Résumé & Cover Letter, which are quite possibly the most important business documents you and your peers will ever write. You should strive to provide a thorough and helpful critique of their work with strong reasoning and supported explanations. A good critique will help your peer in doing better on the assignment, getting a better grade, and, ideally, developing a perfect résumé & letter. A successful critique does not "edit" the paper, does not just give one sided (all negative or all positive) comments, and does not just give suggestions to change. Use the book, my lectures, class discussions, and previous work in class to support your critique. Your critique should be about 1.5 pages. It is doubtful a critique under 1 page will be adequate. In your critique, you should to develop a thesis or several main points and have several topic-based paragraphs.

For this critique you should:

1. Give the resume and cover letter the 20-45 second “review” as is common for most résumés when they are first received. Spend 20-45 seconds looking over the résumé & letter and then decide if you would continue reviewing the résumé for the job or it you would discard it. First discuss this in your critique. Explain why you would either continue reviewing or why you would discard it.
2. Thoroughly critique the résumé and letter using the book, my lectures, class discussions, and previous work in class to support your answers. Remember not to just focus on just small things, but to look at the big picture.
3. Finally end by looking over the résumé & covert letter feedback I provide in the assignment description. How well do they do following this feedback? Are they making any mistakes? What are they doing well?

To submit the critique email me and your peer the critique (feel free to CC me, just make sure I am included in the same email as your peer) by 11:59:59 9/15.