Reflecting on Chapter 5 “From University to Career: Creating a Successful Transition, TRU”
This post comes to you from Noah Arney, Certified Career Development professional and Policy Specialist in the Office of the Provost and Vice President Academic, TRU. His research focuses on work-integrated learning, skills development, and educational policy.
Shortly after I joined Thompson Rivers University (TRU) I was asked to write the Application Documents chapter for the “From University to Career” textbook. My background in supporting students with application documents over the prior decade as well as my recently awarded Certified Career Development Professional (CCDP) designation meant that I had experience with application documents for a wide range of fields and for clients of a surprising breadth of backgrounds. I’ve worked with high school students, college students, university students, and adults ages 18-60 on their job applications. Though I’ve moved to a new role at TRU, I am very proud of the work that my colleagues and I have done with this Open Educational Resource (OER).
The core concept I want readers of Chapter 5 to understand is that resumes and cover letters are their own genres of business documents, and that means that they have certain things that are expected and certain things that aren’t. Importantly, those can change depending on the type of position or industry you are applying for. Just like with any other writing that is meant to convince someone of something, the principles of rhetoric make the writing of a resume or cover letter much easier.
A job application isn’t neutral, and it’s not (generally) being read by a computer. It is a specific thing that is sent from a human to another human, with the intention of convincing them to invite you to an interview. Sure, there are technology tools that make going through large piles of applications easier, but eventually a human makes the decision. That means that the writing has a purpose, getting an interview, and an audience, the hiring manager.
The final part is the structure of the writing, which I go into some depth on in the chapter. To support that I created a number of examples for readers to learn from. Those examples went on to form the basis of another OER that our team at TRU created. I was able to work with fellow faculty members and authors on this text Leanne Mihalicz and Sarah Gibson to develop a catalogue of resumes that were based around the expected conventions from eight different sectors and normally two different points of a person’s career. You can see all of those in one of the appendices of “From University to Career” and there’s also a link to the bigger and expanded Resume Catalogue OER that now has 17 different examples, most with two versions.
These two OERs have been instrumental in my practice both while I was a faculty member at TRU supporting students’ career development, as well as in my private practice now that I am in a different role. Being able to connect students with examples, ideas, and reasons for why application documents are written in certain ways and how to think critically about what makes a convincing argument in a cover letter or resume makes my one to one meetings much more impactful and productive. More, it gives those I work with a place to go to to continue their growth and development after we’ve met.
One of the things I’ve seen at institutions across the country is a move to be able to track how many students use the resources being developed by career services offices. Unfortunately this often means locking those resources away behind a student login. That means that those who don’t have valid access to the site no longer get to benefit from the work that these offices have created. Being able to write up this chapter and develop the Resume Catalogue means that not only do students at TRU get to benefit from what we have created, but people all over the world, maybe even people who don’t know what TRU is, get to benefit, improve, and grow. That means a lot to me. It means that the work I put into this gets to reverberate far beyond what I could do myself. Every time someone at another institution told me that their career services office has started using the textbook in some of their classes I got excited because it means that even more people will get to learn tools to improve their writing, and to put out application documents worth reading.
As we embark on this blog series, we invite you to explore each chapter and provide valuable feedback through our Chapter Feedback Tool
On behalf of the ACE-WIL PD Committee, thank you to Noah Arney for their insightful and meaningful contribution as Chapter Five author of the open educational resource “From University to Career: Creating a Successful Transition, TRU”.