Description
Overview
This assignment prepares you to complete the next Module. Do not start the next module until you have completed this assignment.
Too often, I meet students who have a great idea about what they want to do for their career, but have a very vague idea about what it takes to achieve it. Unfortunately, too many students find that they are not equipped or competitive enough to enter the job market near the end of their college experience, when changes to their education is the most difficult. Therefore, this assignment may help you achieve the following goals:
use research to develop a more informed approach to your chosen career,
practice report memo writing for professional writing, and
create a report that can inform others of a particular career.
Assignment Parameters
For this assignment you will create no more than two-pages of a Memo Report (single-spaced) that will provide information on the context of the career you are interested in seeking. The readings/materials that are posted on the homepage of this Module will help you gather information for your research. For your report, you can choose to address two directions:
1) If you know your career path/job position, look up this career and acquire as much information about it as possible through the materials provided. You can choose to supplement this information with additional research of your own.
2) If you are unsure of your career path, go through the process of creating a "Career Profile" under the "College Student" link at OhioMeansJob.com (Links to an external site.). This site will take you through a series of questions to help you decide on a potential career. After you create a profile, you can choose to focus on one career to write about or do a comparison of two or three potential careers you are interested in seeking.
Using the sample memo report on page 376 from the Anderson textbook, create a memo report that addresses all of the following prompts:
Provide a brief description of the career and its function.
Address the general requirements or qualifications for your desired career(s). That is, what do you (or someone in your position) need to do in order to become qualified for this position? This may include internships, particular course paths, and additional certifications.
What are challenges or obstacles that this career may pose?
What are some of the benefits?
Pulling from research on the market context for this career, provide your reader information on topics such as competitiveness, growth, salary, and other conditions relevant to this career.
You can include additional relevant information as needed. You can use the above list to help you create section titles for your report.
Interview Component
In addition to this, I would like for you to seek out and interview someone who has experience in the field. You may know someone working in your career choice, a fellow classmate who is completing a prospective internship, or a professor who teaches in your related field. While you may not use all of the interviewee's response to write your questions, the response may be helpful to you in crafting your memo. If you are doing a comparative of multiple careers, you will only need to interview one person for one career option, but you are welcome to interview more representatives of your other interested careers. Here are some questions you may want to ask:
What does a [insert your career title] do on a regular basis?
What are some of the challenges of this job?
What would you do differently in acquiring this job?
What is the best part of the job?
Why did you choose this career?
What is the best advice you can give to someone in college and starting on this career path?
If you have trouble with knowing who to interview, please contact career services at your respective campus, a librarian, or me to help you find someone appropriate for this assignment. The interview can be completed over the phone, by email, or in person. Make sure you incorporate aspects of your interview into your report and reference your interview source by full name and occupation. However, you do not need to create a citation page for this project. Cite your source as both in-text and as a footnote at the end of the memo.
You may use resources other than the ones listed for this Module, such as other websites to help supplement your research.
Reader/Audience Approach:
You can think about this report as a document that helps a reader better understand your chosen career. As a technical document, your report should be useful to your reader, and this report may help them make an informed decision about a process. This will require you to consider the reader's position for writing your report. Reference your textbook and assigned materials as needed.
To Complete this Assignment:
Interview a representative within the chosen career and include relevant information into the report.
Submit an effective, useful, reader-centered memo report with demonstrated analysis and understanding of career(s) contexts and audience.
Please follow these rubric:
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeDemonstrated comprehensiveness in context, description, and useful information. The document is connected and readable on a global (overall) level.
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeIncorporation of research for credibility and support. Citations are encouraged but not assessed as stringently in this Module, since we have not covered this topic/expectations for this course yet.
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeDemonstrated use of proper formatting, grammar, and mechanics. The document is readable on a sentence level.
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeInterview Component: the effective incorporation of your Interview source as useful context and information to the reader.
This criterion is linked to a Learning OutcomeAudience: the document is useful and readable to the audience (reader-centered approach). It informs the reader of your career field in ways that can help the reader make decisions about the career.
To writer: my major is engineering management. please choose a potential career about my major to focus on.