Issue in Writing: Hiring Literacies

During times of financial uncertainty and amid the ongoing pandemic, two- and four-year universities have witnessed a decrease in enrollment as students are forced to directly enter the workforce as a means to make ends meet, avoid spiraling debt, or act in the best monetary interests of their families (National Student Clearinghouse, IHEP, CBPP). Similarly, students who were previously attending college have cited financial burdens or family emergencies as their primary reason for putting their education on hold. These sacrifices further highlight a growing educational disparity between the privileged and the unprivileged, which has become increasingly reflective of differences in race and income. It is those underprivileged students who suffer the most from a lack of hiring or application literacies, as the need to hold a paying job supersedes career aspirations and part- or full-time employment grows and shrinks with the struggling economy.

 

How does timing factor into teaching hiring literacies? For example, why is the assignment targeted to first-year composition students? Why specify that the material can be adjusted to the secondary level?

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Earlier interventions of technical and professional writing—particularly hiring literacies and professionalization support—can lead to greater accessibility and opportunities for students. English curriculums at the secondary level are typically standardized, literature-based programs that struggle to create opportunities for higher transfers of skills or writing, research, or communication abilities. Similarly, students in two- and four-year universities have waited until they are in upper level courses in their specified field before learning about appropriate technical and professional writing strategies. However, job marketing and hiring practices have rapidly changed over the past decade or so—with businesses and even academia requiring students to hold multiple internships or unpaid positions before getting hired into an entry-level job in their field. Because of this, students must learn about hiring literacies and professional writing at an earlier age.

Is it really that important to utilize an ecological approach when addressing hiring literacies? Why can’t you just address the major required materials, such as resumes and cover letters?

 

As mentioned in the provided definition of hiring literacies, hiring refers to ““the practice of finding, evaluating, and establishing a working relationship with future employees, interns, contractors or consultants” (Entrepreneur). Teaching one or two professional materials as isolated documents fails to recognize the greater process that occurs through hiring—one that is based on establishing relationships between parties and between rhetorical texts. An ecological approach acknowledges the complex relationships between different rhetorical aspects of the application and moves beyond theories that attempt to identify a strict formula or organizational pattern for ‘success’. Furthermore, an ecological approach is highly transferable beyond a specific field, position, or job opening. Through a learned understanding of each individual multimodal communication as a site for rhetorical action and connection, students move beyond the performative gesture of creating a simple application and maybe receiving an interview.

 

What might an entire course focused on hiring literacies look like? What type of material would be covered in the curriculum?

 

While the focus of this assignment is developing an ecological rhetorical approach to hiring literacies with an additional emphasis on transferability, there are many other important aspects of technical and professional writing that can be addressed—as well as targeted aspects of social justice rhetoric, community outreach or community literacy, issues of race and class, and general composition pedagogy. A focus on these topics might attempt to do the following:

 

• Address the ongoing problems that surround current secondary and post-secondary professional writing pedagogical practices.

• Recognize the national discrepancies in approaches to hiring literacies and early professionalization, which highlight issues of privilege and advance the systematic oppression of low-income and minority students.

• Emphasize the importance of early intervention in literacy education, practical implementation of technical writing pedagogies, and equal accessibility to hiring literacies for all students.

• Offer potential solutions, suggestions for direction action, and sound pedagogical practices. These suggestions include implementing antiracist, diverse collections of professional voices within writing curriculums, recognizing biases of SAE versus AAVE, and outreach, such as job talks or networking practice, with community leaders.

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Sample Writing Assignment #1: An Ecological Approach to Hiring Literacies

 

This assignment is primarily written and designed for use in a first-year writing or composition course but can be easily adjusted for a second-year special topics course or scaled down for integration into an upper-level secondary education curriculum. It combines skills and learning goals typically associated with rhetorical analysis and the production of rhetorical, multimodal texts as a means of self-presentation.

 

When people hear the terms “hiring” or “job application”, they immediately tend to turn their attention to one of two documents: the resume or the cover letter. While these materials are indeed important, many often forget that being successfully hired to fill a position is not based solely on a single text, but instead on a complex ecology of different texts working in tandem to accomplish a single goal. Although each of these documents might operate with varying sub-purposes and underlying motivations, the collective body of produced texts attempts to portray the same, concrete message: I am the best candidate for this position.

 

Applying an ecological approach to hiring literacies is an effective and productive method for observing and understanding the importance of traditionally forgotten texts. Remember that in the context of this course, literacy refers to “the ability, confidence, and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living”, while hiring centralizes these concepts within “the practice of finding, evaluating, and establishing a working relationship with future employees, interns, contractors or consultants” (Alberta Education, Entrepreneur). The skills developed through recognizing and building a diverse, substantiative ecology of often-underappreciated hiring texts are highly transferrable, with implications in every field of study or profession. Through attempting to create your own multimodal examples and analyze their rhetorical effectiveness, you will be working to meet the learning goals outlined below.

 

Learning Goals:

 

1. Demonstrate rhetorical flexibility within both academic and nonacademic (or public) writing contexts.

2. Produce rhetorically effective responses to varying writing tasks (including differences of purpose, audience, subject, genre, and medium) by varying content, structure, language, and conventions in ways appropriate to the rhetorical and professional context.

3. Recognize and experiment with the rhetorical effects of language choices.

4. Adapt composing processes to different contexts and situations and for a variety of media (e.g., print, oral, digital, multimedia).

 

Description: For this assignment, students will be tasked with considering their own rhetorical ecology as they prepare to apply for a ‘job opening’ within the company or industry of their choosing. Instead of viewing this as a fictional exercise, students may also take this opportunity to consider their own areas of expertise and professional aspirations by searching for real or currently existing availabilities. In putting together their application, students should identify three (3) different types of hiring-related texts and attempt to create them with the job opening in mind.

 

Students may choose from any of the suggested texts or focus on a more specific aspect of the hiring process within their field of study:

 

• resumes or curriculum vitae (CV)                             - letters of recommendation

• cover letters                                                                - headshots (or portraits)

• visual portfolios                                                          - examples of previous work

• letters of recommendation                                        - exchanged emails or phone calls

• LinkedIn or professional profiles                              - personal websites or blogs

• in-person or virtual interview(s)                               - background research

• one-minute “elevator pitch”                                      

 

Prior to beginning work on their portfolio of application materials, students should first be able to produce one of the following:

 

• A posting or listing for a real job opening that includes specific information about the position, such as a job description, requirements, and location—as well as a brief (student-written) statement about the company or organization.

• A posting or listing for a fictional job opening that is written by the student and follows the same format outlined above (job description, requirements, and location)—as well as a brief (student-written) statement about the company or organization.

 

After providing their posting/listing, students can begin working on their portfolio. While students should feel comfortable choosing and experimenting with various texts, instructors should also consider any restrictions or requirements that might directly benefit any intended outcomes of the assignment. If there is a particular genre or medium that you feel best highlights an ecological approach to hiring literacies, do not hesitate to provide examples or designate class time for discussion.

 

Reflection: After completing their portfolio, students should then write a 500-750 word analysis/reflection of their rhetorical choices and improved understanding of hiring literacies as an ecology. This reflection is essentially a rhetorical analysis of their own work—why they made the choices they made with regard to content, evidence, organization, style, design, tone, format, etc. and how these choices reflect or respond to the differing demands or influences of the rhetorical situation (the message/problem, audience, and communicator’s ethos/presence). Additionally, students should be prepared to explain how each individual text functions within the context of the entire project—how separate aspects of the application directly or indirectly influence, inform, engage, reinforce, and speak to each other through an understanding of hiring literacies.

 

Criteria for Evaluation:

 

• Clear focus on selected job posting and well-defined purpose/message.

• Solid development of personal qualifications and potential benefits as an employee, with appropriate background information and with claims that are well-supported with good reasons and evidence (examples, illustrations, etc.).

• Demonstration of effective use of rhetorical strategies (use of appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos; effective style and format, use of visuals; effective tone and language).

• Effective use of appropriate format, genres, and modes of communication (and deployment of rhetorical strategies that define these genres/modes) to advocate for desired position.

 

Invention Activity: Statement of Goals and Choices

 

• Describe your goals for this project. What, specifically, is this piece trying to accomplish--above and beyond satisfying the minimum requirements outlined in the task description? In other words, what work does, or might, this piece do? For whom? In what contexts?

 

• What specific rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices did you make in service of accomplishing the goal(s) articulated above? Catalog, as well, choices that you might not have consciously made, those that were made for you when you opted to work with certain genres, mediums, materials, and technologies.

 

• Why did you end up pursuing this plan as opposed to the others you came up with? How did the various choices listed above allow you to accomplish things that other sets or combinations of choices would not have?

 

Additional Resources:

 

The instructor should use this space to include links to any reputable websites or examples that they feel may help provide guidance for their students. The following resources have proven to be useful in the past, but many universities and institutions have their own guides and tools listed under the “Resources” section of their writing or career center websites. Including these resources will encourage students to take advantage of the many resources that they have at their disposal.

 

KU Writing Center: https://writing.ku.edu/writing-guides

KU University Career Center: https://career.ku.edu/jobsearch

University of Alabama Career Center: https://career.sa.ua.edu/develop/resumes/

Purdue OWL: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/job_search_writing/preparing_an_application/index.html