At this point in your academic career, you likely have declared a major and have a general sense of the career field you are entering. Career field, however, is a broad term, and there are many jobs your major can prepare you for. What you will choose depends on many factors, and it is important to have a clear sense of potential jobs before applying.
This assignment involves two parts: writing a formal report and adapting that report for a website.
Formal Report Portion:
Write a formal report in which you analyze two different job positions in your major area of study and determine whether both, one, or neither of these positions are suitable for you. These two positions should be realistic, actual jobs you are potentially interested in holding someday. The body section of the report should contain the analysis of the two jobs, and the conclusions section should contain your assessment of their suitability.
Completing this formal report will require researching the requirements, working conditions, pay scale, geographic expectations, job outlook, and other pertinent factors related to both jobs. A good place to start is the Occupational Outlook Handbook at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (www.bls.gov/ooh/ (Links to an external site.)). You should use the Occupational Outlook Handbook as a source. You should also include two to four additional credible sources in the report.
Formal reports often include visual elements, such as tables, infocharts, graphs, and so forth. Your report should include four visual elements in sections of your choosing.
You can treat this formal report as akin to a research report. You can find a complete explanation of the standards for a research report and a sample formal report in Chapter 10 of Writing that Works. You should also consider the writing lessons and strategies covered in Chapters 1 & 2 and throughout the semester.
Questions to consider as you write the formal report:
How can I maintain a professional tone throughout while still making my report interesting and concise?
How will I organize the information? What kind of headings and sections should I include?
What details of the two jobs are most important? What is relevant to include and what is not?
Where will I incorporate visual elements?
What sources will be most effective for my research needs? Where will I find my sources?
Have I included all necessary sections and other specifications listed below in Formatting and Required Elements?
See Formatting and Required Elements below for more details.
Web Page Portion:
You will also adapt your formal report for use on the web. That means you will distill the report down to one to two (1-2) Word document pages worth of information and re-craft that content to be suitable for the web in terms of its organization and visual appearance.
Questions to consider as you adapt the report for the web:
How much material will I pull from the report to equal one-two pages worth of online content?
How will I change the tone and trim the information to highlight the important elements?
How can I use the inverted pyramid method of organization?
How can I break up dense blocks of text into smaller chunks and use headings/subheadings to guide the reader quickly?
Formatting and Required Elements for Report:
Headings, page numbers, headers, section headings, white space, and other relevant design elements as recommended in Chapter 10. You should read Chapter 10 in its entirety to do well on this assignment.
Four (4) visual elements either designed by you or reproduced and credited from a professional source. Remember to number figures sequentially throughout the report (Figure 1, Figure 2, and so forth) and credit the source, if applicable.
The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook AND two to four (2-4) additional credible sources.
Required sections:
Title page (Use ENC 3213: Professional Writing as the report recipient)
Table of contents
Executive summary (1 page)
Introduction (1-2 pages)
Body (4-5 pages; this is where you analyze the two different jobs)
Conclusions (1 page; evaluate which position seems more desirable and why, or why both or neither are preferable)
Reference page in APA style (for both written material and visuals, if applicable)
You may design a personal brand letterhead to include on the title page, but it is not required.
Tip: convert the final draft of your report into a PDF to ensure that your materials look exactly as you want them to when I open the document for grading.
Formatting and Required Elements for Web Page:
The web page content should span one to two (1-2) Word document pages in length and be formatted according to best practices described in Chapter 6, i.e. with headings, subheadings, lists, content chunking, and inverted pyramid organization.
The web page should use two (2) visual elements from the full report.
The web page should include a list of references at the bottom in APA style.
