Your future employer will often get his or her first impression of you from your resume and cover letter. You will want to make it the best you can! Not only should your resume and cover letter be concise, informative, correctly spelled, grammatically correct, and neatly printed, they should also be targeted to the job you want to get. One of the worst things you can do is send out the same material to several hundred employers. A "blanket" approach is often ignored, leaving you, the job-hunter, wondering where you went wrong.
Sending the same cover letter to multiple potential employers may seem like a good thing, but it's not. It will not show that you really care about having that job, or working for that company. Writing a targeted cover letter to accompany your targeted resume is one of the steps to put your effort above that of the other job-seekers.
Now that so many companies have web sites that describe their products, their offices and services, and the goals that they want to achieve, you have a better opportunity than ever before to write a targeted cover letter that can help get you a good job. Many even have employment opportunities listed on their web pages.
This portfolio assignment gives you a chance to write your resume and practice writing targeted cover letters, applying the basic word processing and web searching skills you have learned to date.
Your assignment is to search the web to find one or more companies that have jobs that you would like to apply for after you graduate (or for this summer, next fall semester, winter break,...), based on the kind of work you want to do, or the place you would like to live, or both. Once you have found the company or companies, read through their web site to find some product, task, problem, or goal that you could help manufacture, solve, or attain. You MUST include a URL of the job listing or other company information with your cover letter, and attach to your assignment a printed copy of one or more of the web pages from which you drew information.
Now, write a complete (and correctly spelled, and so on...) resume that lists the experience and skills you have (or think you will have by the time you graduate). This will be a single resume that may covers a lot of material about you, but in no case should be more than two pages long. Please note that if you were to actually send a version of this resume, it should be very carefully edited to target that position you seek.
Next, using only one side of one 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, write a cover letter to the the appropriate person (make it to the president of the company, if you can't find another person) explaining why they should hire you. Use the information you located on their web site about how you could help them to justify your application. Because this is a practice cover letter, it may be much shorter than a real one, but learning to write concisely and choose only the most relevant information are valuable skills that you will learn by doing this assignment. (For many jobs it is recommended that applicants with a bachelor's degree and little experience limit their resume and cover letter to one page each.)
Then, for a good or excellent assignment evaluation, prepare a second cover letter using the same resume. Of course the second cover letter must target a different (but related enough to use the same resume) job opportunity based on different information from the web.
You will want to write up to three different cover letters (see below for the scoring details).
The final part of this assignment is your Self Assessment (SA). Use the Self Assessment, about a page long, to elaborate on a few positive things, a few negative things (e.g., "learning moments" or mistakes to be avoided in the future), and some interesting things (e.g., expected or unexpected happenings, insights into the subject, new areas of curiosity) that occurred as you completed the assignment.
Think about the process you followed before you write the SA, and you may want to use the STAIR problem-solving steps to help yourself organize your actions and thoughts. It might help to keep a journal on a separate sheet of paper as you search the web and write your resume to list the STAIR steps, tools, techniques, and repetitions of steps so you can remember them later.
You may format your cover letter, resume, and SA any way you want, but attempt to make good use of the power of your word processor to convey your message effectively. Because correct spelling and grammar are essential to a good resume, if you make more than two mistakes in grammar on an assignment, your grade will drop one step; and there should be no spelling mistakes!