Career Documents Evaluation

I will ask myself the following questions as I evaluate the rhetorical appropriateness of your documents:

The Resume and Cover Letter

Your Ethos

• Are your resume and cover letter suited to the job they're in application to? That is, are you responding to a job ad that you could realistically apply for, and are your documents tailored to that job?
• Do your resume and cover letter emphasize your most relevant qualifications for the job? Do they do so in a compelling way (using active language, effective salesmanship, and creativity)?
• Do your resume and cover letter reflect your enthusiasm for and knowledge of the company?
• Do your resumes and cover letter reflect your professionalism overall?

Organization, Usability, and Design

• Are your resume and cover letters organized in such a way that they are easily navigated and understood?
• Does your visual design match your information design? That is, does your layout reflect and communicate the underlying organization? Are both the visual design and the information design thoroughly consistent?
• Is your resume visually compelling? Would it stand out in a pile, without looking outlandish?
• Did you use nice, elegant paper? (Okay, it's not so important for this assignment—but for actual job applications this is a serious consideration.)

Context and Genre Expectations

• Do your documents live up to the formal expectations of resumes and cover letters? Is your cover letter in an appropriate business letter format? Does your resume look and act like a resume, without defying your readers' expectations?
• Are all your words spelled appropriately? Do you use appropriate grammar throughout?

Reflective Report

• Does your reflective report thoroughly substantiate its arguments about your document strategies, or does it rely more on simple assertion? That is, do you just offer claims about the resume and cover letter's effectiveness, or do you also offer lines of reasoning to back up those claims?
• Does your reflective report provide substantive reflection on the strategies you employed as a rhetor to accomplish a purpose in light of a particular audience and context?
• Does your reflective report convince me not only that you are a savvy rhetor in your job documents, but also in your reflective report itself? Do you see the reflective report as a persuasive document?
• Does your reflective report convince me that you knew what you were doing rhetorically as you composed your cover letter and resume?