Resumes, Cover Letters, and Identity Curation (Blog Entry 11)

Split entry!

This week, we’re departing from our focus on music and looking at the features of strong resumes and cover letters–two types of important writing in the “real” world that I’m assuming you’re already familiar with. If you haven’t written a resume or cover letter before, now is your opportunity. If you already have a resume and/or cover letter that you’ve written for a professional context (school/scholarship, internship, or job application), then this is your opportunity to revisit these documents and make them stronger and up-to-date.

Identity curation is the process of thinking rhetorically about what kinds of information you make publicly available. A personal website on which you highlight your personal successes for prospective employers is a classic example, but these days you are probably aware that even your Facebook and Instagram sites need to be carefully curated with privacy filters so that only specific messages reach the intended audiences.

Visual rhetoric is extremely important in strong resumes and cover letters. It’s a delicate balance–you don’t want to go overboard with an artsy approach, but you don’t want to just stay with boring Times New Roman either (unless you’re writing to a specific business community in a particular field). You need to fill up the white space of the page fairly evenly, but you don’t want to include so much text that the page looks like a block of grey at a glance. Your text needs to be easy-to-read and include enough visual cues (italics, underlining, or boldface) in sparing amounts to draw the reader’s eye (hint: use one of these visual cues at a time, not more). But what’s the right mix for you? Fortunately, the internet abounds with examples from which to choose from.

Part 1 of this entry:

• POST a link to an electronic example of a resume. There are several ways to find this. Two ideas are: you can run a Google image search using the keywords “resume examples” and go from there, or you can find an online resume or CV for an individual through a specific website personal or company website.
• EVALUATE the resume that you found. Be honest and fair, and identify specific elements in the resume that shape your thinking.
• DISCUSS the effectiveness of the resume in communicating what you perceive to be the goal of the text
• SPECULATE about how white spaces/text and other tenets of visual rhetoric impact the resume
• CONNECT this resume to the larger sociocultural context–what is the intended audience? Does this example reveal anything about the way our society values this kind of writing?

Part 2 of this entry:

• What are you listening to as you are writing your blog post? Or, what kinds of music do you like to listen to when you study? Post the link to the song, or provide an example. (If you’re a person who normally doesn’t listen to music when doing these kinds of tasks, humor us– think of a genre of music that you could listen to in this case.)
• Why do you think this music is conducive (or perhaps distracting) while you do work? Why do you choose to listen to it?

Have fun!