Career Materials

Various due dates

Value: 225 for all elements.
Informational memo, marketing letter, resume, and cover letter all pencil graded 1 time,
revisable 2 times for inclusion in final portfolio.

Situation
For young design professionals, an electronic portfolio is a necessary way to represent
yourself to potential employers or graduate schools. You might feel like you are a little
too early in your career to be starting the portfolio, but consider this course an
opportunity to start a portfolio that will later become your career face. Some of you will
be asked to assemble a portfolio in your 5th year portfolio class.

While I am asking you to start a portfolio in unit 1; you will come back to the portfolio
towards the end of the class to upload work you do in this course. See the separate
portfolio assignment sheet for more information on that portfolio. This document will
focus on a career profile, a marketing letter, a cover letter and a resume.

Audience and Purpose

You will want your career materials to impress two different types of visitors: the
accidental ones who have found you via a web search, and the viewers you send to your
site. The purpose of your site is to promote yourself and your work; your work, your
marketing letter, and accomplishments via resume will need to be clearly presented; the
navigation of your site will need to be easy, the design of your site will need to be
consistent with your marketing letter’s tone and vision.

Products
The job materials will consist of four items:

• A researched, informative memo directed to me.

o To complete the Marketing Letter, you will need to interview at least one
person (you are welcome to interview more) who can give you some
insight about trends in your field, perhaps trends at his/her firm or school,
and can give you some insight into the skill set you will want to develop
by the time you get to the end of your education.
o You are also required to do some secondary research on the topic of
“where is my field headed? What skill set do I need? Which skill set will
give me a competitive advantage?”
o Finally, you will need to find a specific job ad if possible, or at least a firm
organization you want to apply to, and you will need to identify key points
to hit on in your job cover letter.
The memo should be consistent with memo format (external design features as
well as internal features like a bottom line opening paragraph, clear paragraphing,
etc.). Hard copy; posting to e-portfolio is optional.
• A Marketing Letter (see chapter 2 of WDP): market yourself to future employers.

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 Using WDP’s outline, adjust it as follows:
o No need for prospect’s address.
o A salutation: could be “Dear Readers” or something more clever than that.
o Opening: a one or two sentence personal mission statement.
o Core content: a. the skill set you have, but also skills you expect to have
by the time you graduate (hard and soft); b. your vision for your field in
general based on at least one personal interview and secondary research, c.
problems, projects and/or firms (or schools) you’d like to work for /
attend. You do not have to follow this implied order of a.b.c; a pattern
that goes b, c, a would also make sense.
o Questions: I think you can skip this part.
o Your objective: like the objective on a resume—a short clear statement of
what you want out of this exchange with readers.
o Your conclusion. Just adjust it to yourself.
Some elements not covered in this marketing letter that you might also attend to
include a logo for yourself, links to relevant sites (because this letter will be online), a
personal photo, or anything you think might enhance this personal marketing letter.
Post to e-portfolio.
• A traditional job cover letter. The marketing letter will be expansive, it will be
about you. The cover letter will be concise and focused; it should be about what
you can do for the firm. Hard copy: optional posting to e-portfolio.
• A resume appropriate for your career goals (see pages 125-26 in WDPs). The
resume should include your education, and your accomplishments, but you might
also want to list course work, projects, and specific skills. It should be
professionally, effectively, and appropriately designed. Hard copy and post to e-
portfolio.
• Your best work relevant to your future goals so far. At least three papers, designs,
or other evidence of your work as a student so far, either at NDSU, from another
college, or even outside of school if your best work has been professional or
personal. These items will need to be introduce or contextualized in some way on
your site, not simply uploaded or posted.

Grading Rubric
Document Evaluation
Informative memo: Due 9.9. 50 points.
• Strong bottom line paragraph. How do all these pieces
fit together? What am I going to read?
• Detailed, specific, relevant, information drawn from the
interview.
• Good, relevant secondary sources found; incorporated
into your memo correctly according to APA or another
documentation systems of your choice.
• Good short summary of a job you will write a cover
letter for.
• Cite those sources properly (APA or other) at the end
of the memo.

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 • Visually clear and effective organization of the memo.
• Clear and concise writing, awareness of me as your
audience, middle-style.
Thank-you letter. Be specific, be sincere. Make your parents Due 9.9. 10 points.
proud.
Marketing Letter: Due 9.14. 50 points.
• Make good use of the WDP outline (although modify it
if necessary.
• Include information from your interview and secondary
research.
• Make sure your core content is specific; use concrete
examples or stories of skills, not general, vague
statements.
• Perfect, or near-perfect execution of prose, including
appropriate tone and style.
• Probably about two pages, which won’t look very long
online.
Cover letter: Due 9.23 50 points.
Your marketing letter is meant to be a generalized selling of
yourself to the profession as a whole. This cover letter should
be a specific one-page letter that:
• responds to a job ad or at least a specific firm.
• emphasizes what you can do for the firm or
organization.
• supports claims with specific examples.
This letter does not need to go on your website.
Resume: Due 9.23 50 points.
• Attractive and logical page design; uses identifiable
design principles.
• Appropriate level of detail with each item.
• Consistent and appropriate writing style, error-free.
• Probably one page.
Additional items: your best work yet. Due 9.23 15 points.
Each item is effectively introduced:
• context for its production explained.
• relevance to future explained.

Grade Definitions
A = excellent documents in all aspects—some slight room for improvement. (91-100)
B = good; some aspects of the documents might be excellent, others will be good. (81-90)
C = acceptable completion of the assignment. No major problems, but room for improvement in most areas
of the assignment. (71-80)
D = a major aspect of the assignment has not been completed (i.e. one of the fours short documents not
included). Elements of the assignment might be quite good, but with unsatisfactory completion of
certain elements, the assignment will remain a D. (61-70)
F = incomplete assignment because page length was not met, proper research was not completed, two or
more documents not turned in, genre conventions not adhered to, etc. (60 and below)

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WDP-English 326 Fall 2009 Brooks 4