April 11th Response

"Like other genres, resumes are a means of social interaction, as Carolyn Miller (1984) suggested twenty years ago. And as Joe Comprone (1993) explains, any genre is itself the place where writers balance two sets of needs at least: on the one hand, the needs of a writer to express an intent; on the other; the needs of one or more audiences. Somehow, Comprone says, we must balance these competing needs."

I like that this article cites Comprone's idea that resumes belong to the genre of social interaction and those of us who are creating them need to not only take into consideration our personal desires but also keep in mind "the needs of a socially constructed world". This is important because for example, some potential employers may put a lot of emphasis on an applicant's GPA and if someone does not feel that his/her GPA is important and chooses not to include it in his/her resume-- he/she will probably not have as good of a chance at receiving that position as he/she would have had he/she included his/her GPA.

This idea of the "social interaction" genre relates back to what Rosenberg said about how reading should be like “participating in a conversation.” When a potential employer is reading my resume, I'd like it to be personal enough that he/she feels he/she is speaking with me, but I'd also like to make sure that I am getting the point across and discussing all of the important points they need to know about me without them having to ask. This feeling is a mix between both Rosenberg's article and Comprone's idea of genre.

On page 155 the writer talks about having students study persuasion in different types of writing such as newspaper articles, web sites, poems, and academic papers. I think it is important to keep persuasion in mind when creating a resume and cover letter because they are essentially tools to persuade a potential employer into hiring you. I like that the professor created an assignment in which students needed to collect and study a certain number of resumes within their field of study. I think it is important to look at what has already been done to decide what is good and bad practice. This relates back to a couple of our other readings such as Reading Like A Writer. This is because this assignment is essentially having students reading resumes like they would write them. These students will learn from the experience and be able to pick up on things that they may like or dislike.