Assignment Instruction Planning Work. Respond to the prompts for planning your Job Application Package. The first step in drafting your Job Application Package is planning. The following prompts ask you

to write about your Package, including its audiences, purposes, contexts, contents, and constraints. The goal of your response is to help you begin to get a handle on what you're doing and to engender a conversation with your peers that can advance your thinking in productive ways. When it comes to planning, more tends to be better, so don't hold back. Note--the material you create here will be very useful for you in creating the Cover Memo component of this project. (Although parts of your planning work may be written in the future tense, but your cover memo should not be.) of your education will you emphasize? What aspects of your previous job experience? Use the following prompts for planning: 1. What is the job? What is the company? Include a link AND screen shot or pdf of the job ad. You should choose a current ad for a professional, full-time job or internship. It should be something that you are qualified to get (even if it's a stretch). It can NOT be the job you currently hold or a job you have previously held (though it can be at the same company.) 2. Job Description and Qualifications Needed: Based on the job ad, what will you be doing in this position? Based on the job ad, what qualifications are required and what qualifications are recommended? What kinds of personal qualities? In other words, what kind of person are they looking for? Be specific and push beyond a superficial response (everyone is looking for a "hard worker," but knowing that is of limited value to you). 3. Audience Analysis: . (= analysis of the audience of your job application material; i.e., an analysis of the company or of the specific department or reader there.) To find recent news and information about the company, look around the company's website and then do a search on ProQuest (available from the Penn State libraries website). What clues can you infer about the corporate culture, the size of the company, and so on? From these clues, who do you think would be reading your job application? Human resources? Project managers? Executives? Are there any recent developments (new contracts, clients, expansions, etc.) that you could use to demonstrate your knowledge of the company? What can you learn about current news about the company? About projects in the pipeline? About any recent company setbacks or concerns? Take a look at the value statement of the company. Can you identify company values that signal the type of employee they might be looking for? 4. Resume: Describe how you will focus your resume for this particular job, company, and reader (within the company). Which aspects of your education and experience will you highlight? What information will be less important for that job? Note: you may already have created a resume. For this assignment, you will need to fine-tune the resume to fit this specific job ad. In the Cover Memo you will need to provide a number of points that support your belief that the resume is persuasive for this particular audience. 5. Cover Letter: Describe how you will focus your cover letter for this job, company, and reader. Which aspects of your of your education will you highlight? What aspects of your experience will you highlight? What information will be less important for the job? What kind of tone will you take in the letter?