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
Open Access
Closed
Topics

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  2. Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Written Communication

Cites in this index (5)

  1. Written Communication
  2. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  3. Research in the Teaching of English
  4. Written Communication
  5. Research in the Teaching of English
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    Journal of the American Dietetic Association  
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CrossRef global citation count: 21 View in citation network →