About Face: Reflexively Considering “Audience” in Hiring Situations

Abstract

Using data from 88 students, 20 advisers, and 24 hirers about U.S. résumés, this article focuses on face of the company, the concept of employers' evaluating how well applicants might represent a company. The results of applying rhetorical listening’s identification–disidentification to “face” suggested two outcomes and their implications. First, primary audiences invoked secondary audiences to the point in which they conflated, suggesting that résumés should incorporate secondary audiences. Second, hirers sometimes violated their own beliefs about diversity hiring because of audiences they invoked, suggesting that because invoking audience can perpetuate inequitable hiring practices, hirers should be more nuanced about the audiences they choose.

Teaching Workplace Genre Ecologies and Pedagogical Goals Through Résumés and Cover Letters

“…When students understand how their writing choices help them accomplish their purposes for writing, students remember those lessons, such asRandazzo’s (2020)annotated résumé activity. Becoming reflexive communicators (Randazzo, 2019a) helps students better understand how their writing choices present themselves as people and asks students to interrogate their uses of language and argument.…”

“…While recruiting more nontenure-track would have led to a more accurate snapshot of the service course, it was difficult to recruit instructors for this data-rich study, as de-identifying students' résumés and cover letters was time consuming for participants. Many of the instructors here were also white and nominally middle class; thus, this article's findings about teaching the résumé and cover letter may not fully address racism, sexism, ableism, or classism that students may face (Randazzo, 2019a;Shelton, 2020). In the demographics survey, I did not collect data about instructors' terminal degrees; instead, I collected data about instructors' coursework: 11 of these 20 instructors had graduate-level coursework specifically about teaching the BPC service course.…”

“…The formal elements of résumés and cover letters have remained relatively stable since the 1980s (McDowell, 1987), changing little when transitioning to electronic media (Baker et al, 1998;Hutchinson & Brefka, 1997). However, the social contexts surrounding résumés and cover letters have changed immensely (Randazzo, 2019a); now, students develop their own personal brands (Watson, 2019), network online via LinkedIn (Moore, 2019), and navigate applicant tracking systems (ATS). During the 2010s, several studies considered how instructors have taught within classrooms at their own universities, providing implications about where students find résumé-writing advice (Randazzo, 2016), how to design an effective résumé (Diaz, 2013), and how to engage students with additional writing and research about their future careers (Fillenwarth et al, 2018;Randazzo, 2012).…”