This assignment consists of two parts (?company research & interview? part and ?cover letter &
resume? part). Details of both parts are explained in this document. For the accomplishment of
this assignment, prepare a SINGLE MS Word document that contains both parts and upload to
the designated dropbox by due date/time.
Part 1: Company Research & Interview
Start each section described below on a new page.
Section 1: Job Description (Job advertisement)
Identify a job posting for a position or internship you would be interested in applying for within
the next a couple years or so. You can find a current job posting almost anywhere, including
through: a professional association job bank, or by going to a site like careerbuilder.com,
monster.com, or milwaukeejobs.com. The location of the job is not important. If the job ad you
find happens to be in California and it?s not realistic for you to move, don?t worry. As long as the
job suits your training, skills, and interests, the job posting is good to use because you will NOT
need to actually apply for the job. However, make sure these when you select a job ad:
(a) Have the name of company and position title (don?t use a job ad where the company name
and position title are not specified), and (b) Check whether the company is fairly large and well
known because you have to do some further investigation for the company, thus a large and
famous company will be a good choice. (c) Should have at least 5 to 6 requirements/duties since
you will use some of these for your cover letter. (d) Basic information about the company is
included. See the evaluation criteria on page 6 for details of required items.
You can pick a job that requires a 4-year (bachelors) degree, and ?pretend? that you have
graduated and are applying for your future job (this is the only ?liberty? you will take in terms of
information on your cover letter/resume), with the rest of the information being factual.
Readings & additional materials for this assignment:
Textbook Chapters
A Guide to a Successful Employment Interview (pp. 37-42)
Question Asking (pp. 89-94)
7 Things to Research before Any Job Interview (Course D2L/content/career interview)
Guide to Research Companies, Industries, Countries (Course D2L/content/career interview)
6th APA style guideline (Course D2L/content/career interview)
WinteriM 2017 Com 105-201
Career Interview Project Instruction page 2
Page 2 of 7
Page 1 of your project document should include a job ad that you selected. Job ad can be
copy/pasted or retyped from the job posting. Make sure that the fonts match up and all the
information fits on one or two pages. You don?t need to put a title for this job ad page.
Section 2: Company Research
Begin this section on a new page. Conduct research on the company associated with the job
posting you identified in the section 1 of this interview project, and write a two or three page
(double-spaced) summary of what you learned. You need to include at least three sources of
information for your research (using 6th APA style in-text citations & reference list); with at least
two of these three sources must be ?external? (not written by the company itself. For example,
information from online news sites or business & financial information sites is regarded as
?external?; however, information from the company?s web site will be regarded as ?internal?).
Sources can include the company?s website, newspaper articles, or other credible sources of
information on the organization (for more possible information sources, refer to ?Guide to
Research Companies, Industries, Countries?; for more information about 6th APA
citation/reference style, see 6th APA style guideline). In short, it is required to include at least
three information from websites or printed sources for this section, but you have to provide
citations for cited information in an appropriate manner (i.e., 6th APA style citation). If not, the
cited part(s) will be regarded as plagiarism.
Required information in this section is: (a) basic information of the company (at least the name
of the company, location of headquarters), (b) mission/goals of the company, (c) brief history of
the company, (d) products or services provided, (e) Strength of the company, (f) weakness of the
company, (g) major customers, (h) size of the company (e.g., annual revenue/profit, number of
employees, etc.), and (i) major competitors. One paragraph per each topic will work.
Editing this section: Double-spaced, Times New Roman (12 pts), margin (1 inch L/R/T/B). Put a
title as ?Company Research?.
Section 3: Questions and Expected Responses
Imagine that you are having a job interview with the hiring manager of the applying company.
At the end stage of an employment interview, you will be given a chance to ask questions if you
are unsure about something or know more about the position and/or company. What would you
ask? In this section, list five questions what you want to ask as a job candidate. Also, explain
why you would ask the particular questions. After each question/explanation, suggest the range
and answers that you would normally expect to receive. This section examines that rationale for
asking various questions and the expectation for the range of answers one would receive. Again,
you have to develop 5 questions in terms of an interviewee (not as an interviewer or hiring
manager) and suggest 5 expected responses in terms of an interviewer after identifying why you
want to ask the question. So, the sequence will look like: interviewee?s (your) first question ?
reasoning of the first question ? expected response from interviewer, interviewee?s second
question ? reasoning of the second question ? expected response from interviewer, and so on.
Make sure not to use generic interviewee?s questions that may be found from internet. All
questions must be tailored for your applying position and/or organization.
Editing this section: Double-spaced, Times New Roman (12 pts), margin (1 inch L/R/T/B). Put a
title as ?Interviewee Questions and Expected Responses?.
WinteriM 2017 Com 105-201
Career Interview Project Instruction page 3
Page 3 of 7
Section 4: References
Identify the sources of information that are cited in section 2 using 6th APA reference style. The
title of this section must be ?References? and should include at least three references. If you cited
5 sources in the second section, five references should be listed on this page. Do not put
reference of source that was not used in the research section.
Editing this section: Double-spaced, Times New Roman (12 pts), margin (1 inch L/R/T/B).
Part 2: Cover letter & Resume
Section 5: Cover Letter
You do not need to put title for this section, instead treat it as an actual letter. Starting with the
example on textbook page 29, include your address, and email/phone on the top as if it were
printed letterhead, followed by two returns, the date (formatted as month, date, and year. For
example, Oct 1, 2016), and two more returns. Keep the cover to 1 page; unlike the resume, do
not go over though you feel you need to. Many employers will toss out cover letters more than 1
page, so challenge yourself to use your editorial skills.
Parts to include:
? Complete contact information (Address; only for this assignment, you may use pseudoinformation
if you don?t want to identify your actual information)
? Date
? Company official being addressed, including this person?s position, company name, and
company?s snail address
? Salutation
? Introductory paragraph identifying which job you are applying for and where you located the
advertisement, and a brief presentation of yourself. (In academia, a paragraph is 5-7 sentences,
but in this cover letter keep it much more concise, the introduction can be as few as 2-3
sentences).
Relevant readings for this assignment:
Textbook Chapters
Cover letters (pp. 27-32)
Resume writing (pp. 211-213)
UWM Career Service
Resume (http://uwm.edu/careerplan/resumes-interviews-2/resumes/)
Cover letter (http://uwm.edu/careerplan/resumes-interviews-2/cover-letters/)
WinteriM 2017 Com 105-201
Career Interview Project Instruction page 4
Page 4 of 7
? Two paragraphs making clear links between the job requirements and your own qualifications,
skills, and accomplishments. Provide specific examples as proof of your skills and experience.
Take the perspective of the recruiter. Build a detailed and concise explanation of why you are
the right person for a job, so at the end of the cover letter they know why you are a good
candidate to hire based on your strengths and the job requirements. Ask yourself whether a
piece of information that you share will be important to the reader and why. It should take you
a couple of drafts to write the letter and edit it to a page, getting rid of unclear and passive
language.
? A small paragraph indicating why you would like to work for that particular company.
? A concluding paragraph indicating reference to interview, how to contact you, and thanking the
reader. These are very basic requirements, but please read through the examples in the text and
on the UWM Career Development website (http://uwm.edu/careerplan/resumes-interviews-
2/cover-letters/) to see varieties of good cover letter examples. The cover letter while following
some standard requirements should be a unique piece of writing reflecting you (again, 2-3
sentences is fine).
? Correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and flow are vital.
? Recruiters have been known to cast aside a candidate?s application when spotting minor errors.
Therefore, your cover letter and resume can help you stand out from a pool of applicants if
they are written with clarity and sincerity.
Editing this section: Single-spaced, Times New Roman (10-12 pts), margin (1 inch L/R/T/B).
Section 6: Resume
You do not need to label this page, just treat it as an actual resume. (See textbook p. 100 for an
example). There are a variety of resume formats, so pick one that works best for you and works
for the job you are applying for. Please pay attention to the appearance/design aspects of your
resume (neat & tidy), and make sure that all the information fits on one page.
A few key points:
? All education, work experience, additional qualifications must be listed in reverse
chronological order (i.e., starting with most recent and working backwards).
? Your resume should list education first, and then employment information.
? A resume is typically a one-page document ? depending on your experience you will have
more or less information in your resume. For this assignment, do not go over more than 1 page.
? By working with font sizes, types, bullets, bold, underline, italics, margins, spacing, columns,
you can create unique, yet professional and neat resume formats that will allow you to fit even
a large quantity of information on one page.
? Visual formatting is as important as content for a resume, because recruiters typically spend
less than a minute browsing through a resume during the first sifting stage. If your resume
stands out at this stage, it will receive more attention later. Therefore the key information must
be noticeable. White space between items will also make the resume more appealing to the eye.
WinteriM 2017 Com 105-201
Career Interview Project Instruction page 5
Page 5 of 7
? Please be honest in reporting your education, work and other qualifications. The only exception
is that you can pretend you have just graduated, and include your Bachelor?s degree on the
resume if the job requires one (do not be tempted to copy an example online, it?s easy for me to
trace and you will have to do this for your professional career).
? Be sure to list the responsibilities you held at previous jobs in ways that matter to the job you
are applying for. What will help you do this are Action Verbs. Finally, remember to use past
tense when describing jobs you previously held (e.g., ?Worked as a manager of??, while
using present tense for jobs you hold currently.
? Do not include information on references in this assignment. Avoid stating ?References
Available Upon Request? as it is assumed you will be able to do this, so you do not need to use
the space to write this.
? Do not include your high school information on this resume, but make sure that you include
your information on your college. You can also state your major and your anticipated
graduation date (e.g., ?Anticipated Graduation 2017?).
Submitting Assignment
Entire document should not exceed 10 pages. Make sure to put page numbers for all pages
(upper right corner of document). Put titles for each section except some sections (e.g., job ad,
cover letter, and resume). Upload one MS Word document (including part 1 and part 2) to the
?Career Interview Project? dropbox by designated due date/time. File formats other than MS
Word (e.g. ?.pdf?, ?.pages?) will not be evaluated. Please review the evaluation criteria (next
page) before submitting for maximum possible points.