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

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
Open Access: Closed
Topics: discourse analysis technical communication professional writing voice and style

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

Killoran (2009)

The Rhetorical Situations of Web Résumés

Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Killoran (2006)

Self-Published Web Résumés

Journal of Business and Technical Communication
CHARNEY et al. (1995)

“I'm Just No Good at Writing”

Written Communication

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