Anthony S's Tips on Letters of Recommendation

Letters of Recommendation

Letters of Recommendation are useful in many aspects in life, such as when applying for graduate school or a new job/position. It is important to remember that when asking for a letter of recommendation you cannot assume that a "letter recommendation" will be a "good letter of recommendation." So when asking for a letter of recommendation it is important that you specify, "Will you write me a good letter of recommendation?"At this time the person in question will respond "yes" or "no."

Who should you ask for a letter of recommendation?

• Someone who knows you very well
• Someone who has a great opinion about you
• A person with a good reputation
• A person who will be able to write a good letter of recommendation

How do you go about asking for a letter of recommendation?

• Make an appropriate and effective request, such as, "Will you write me a good letter of recommendation?
• Ask the individual if they know you well enough to write a meaningful recomendation
• Pay attention to the individuals demeanor
• If the person says "yes," provide them with an already addressed envelope with a stamp

Provide potential writers with information such as transcripts, resume, awards, due date for the application, professional goals. Many letters of recommendation are confidential and do not allow the individual to share their letter with the person. It is ultimately the decison of the individual whom is writing the recommendation, whether you get a copy or not.

Carlyn M's and Brennan L's Tips on Making It Through a Job Interview Without Breaking a Sweat!

This is the photostory that Brennan and I put together for this blog. I hope you all enjoy it and learn from it :)

The Difference Between Formal and Informal Reports By Terri R.

When in the work place it is very important to know what type of report you have to write for what instance and who your audience is. The two types of reports are formal reports and informal reports. Formal reports are reports that are normally for clients or anything that has to be published and viewed by the public. Informal reports deal with information that is generally internal. For instance when I worked at a retail store and we would have employee memos and bulletins those would be considered informal, but documents that we had to prepare to be seen be seen by customer's like signs or rules about returning policies then those would fall under the category of formal reports.

Informal Reports
Informal reports are generally going to be reports that you will just have to share with your coworkers, like a report of the status of a project, or simply some statistics that you need to share with your coworkers. The difference between an informal report and a formal one mostly comes down to the audience and of course as the names state the amount of formality required when writing for those audiences. The example below is one of an informal lab report that shows a great visual on the difference between that and a formal one. http://writing.umn.edu/tww/disciplines/engineering/assignments/assignmelab.htmlThese examples explain the formats and what should be involved.

Formal Reports
Formal reports require more attention to detail, for instance making sure the ideas that the report is explaining are understandable to the audience by using words that explain concepts in the simplest way possible. Using the example of a lab report, with an informal version you would be able to use jargon because you know the people you are writing to have the same knowledge base that you do, but with a formal report you cannot assume these things are cannot leave out details that to you and your coworkers could be considered common knowledge. Formal to me is just another way of saying that the report has to be as perfect as possible for every one to see while informal is allowed to have a few imperfections. The example I have chosen for formal reports explains that shows what elements have to be involved.
http://engr.bd.psu.edu/psu007/metbd-formal-report.html

Tips for Report Writing
Here are a few of my personal quick tips to deciding which type of report you need to write:

• Be sure to remember who your audience is.
• Make sure whether or not you can use jargon in the report.
• Make sure all the information you are using is correct and from reliable sources.
• Focus on making sure you are using the right tone.

Hopefully these tips make these reports a little easier to understand, and I wish you all luck in your future report writing endeavors.

Magdalena D’s Tips on Writing a Resume

We all have to write a resume at some point of our lives, so it is very important to learn how to write a good and effective resume. I already learned how to do it, and I have my resume ready. Do you? If not, that’s great. You know why? Because I will teach you haw to write a good resume! In addition, I will give you some useful tips.

Resumes are very important documents and you don’t want your resume to look like you did not put a lot of effort into it. You want your future potential employer to be impressed with your resume. You want your resume to stand out, so you can move on to the next step – job interview.

Here are things that you should include in your resume:

• Your full name and last name, address, phone number, and email address


• Objective ( if needed)


• Education


• Work experience ( Describe all present jobs in present tense, and previous jobs in past tense; List your jobs in sequential order with the most recent first)


• Volunteer Experience


• Related Skills


• Languages ( if you speak more than one)


• Accomplishments


• Computer Experience

Here is an example of resume:

Tips for a good resume:

• It should be attractive and easy to read
• It should be free of spelling and grammar errors.
• The format of your letter should be very clear
• Bold the most important information
• No “right” way to do it

Don’t s

• Do not use Wizard, build everything from scratch
• No highlighting
• Do not include references or phone numbers of previous employers
• Do not refer to yourself by using “I”
• Your resume should not be longer than one page
• Do not use font smaller than size 11

To learn more about things that you should not put on your resume you can watch the following video:

I hope that at this point you know how to write a resume. You should start right away, even if you are not currently seeking for an employment. You can always make some changes to your resume and add some new things. I hope that my tips were helpful to you. However, if you are still confused, you are more than welcome to watch the following video: