Journal of Business and Technical Communication Jan 1992

How Writing Quality Influences Readers' Judgments of Résumés in Business and Engineering

DAVIDA H. CHARNEY ; JACK RAYMAN ; LINDA FERREIRA-BUCKLEY

Abstract

To help students enter a professional discourse community, teachers must assess how accurately they both understand the community's discourse practices. Our research investigated how job recruiters seeking to fill positions in mechanical engineering or marketing were influenced by the quality of writing in student résumés. The résumés varied in elaboration, sentence style, mechanics, and amount of relevant work experience. The recruiters rated the résumés to indicate their willingness to interview the students. We found that recruiters in the two fields—engineering and marketing—valued quite different writing features. When we subsequently asked students in business writing and technical writing classes to rate the same résumés, we found that they underestimated the importance of various writing features. Generally, however, students' ratings resembled those of the recruiters in their respective disciplines. This study documents how students can improve their résumés and provides insight into the variations of discourse practices in professional disciplines.

Journal
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Published
1992-01-01
DOI
10.1177/1050651992006001002
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Topics
discourse analysis writing pedagogy technical communication professional writing
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (11)

  1. Londner et al. (2023)
    The Communication Coefficient Method: A New Faculty Grading Tool Designed to He…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  2. Berdanier et al. (2021)
    Characterizing Disciplinarity and Conventions in Engineering Resume Profiles
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  3. Randazzo (2020)
    A Framework for Résumé Decisions: Comparing Applicants’ and Employers’ Reasons
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  4. Fillenwarth et al. (2018)
    Quantification of Engineering Disciplinary Discourse in Résumés: A Novel Genre …
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  5. Martin-Lacroux et al. (2017)
    Do Employers Forgive Applicants’ Bad Spelling in Résumés?
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
Show all 11 →
  1. Wolfe et al. (2016)
    Grammatical Versus Pragmatic Error: Employer Perceptions of Nonnative and Nativ…
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  2. Brandenburg (2015)
    Testing the Recognition and Perception of Errors in Context
    Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
  3. Boettger et al. (2013)
    An Overview of Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Research in Technical Commun…
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  4. Killoran (2009)
    The Rhetorical Situations of Web Résumés
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  5. Killoran (2006)
    Self-Published Web Résumés: Their Purposes and Their Genre Systems
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  6. CHARNEY et al. (1995)
    “I'm Just No Good at Writing”: Epistemological Style and Attitudes Toward Writing
    Written Communication

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