Strategies for Professional Writing

When students come in to The University of Texas at Austin Undergraduate Writing Center with documents which are geared toward particular, post-baccalaureate professional goals, consultants are faced with a very particular situation: on the one hand, writers are demonstrably more invested in the outcome of the writing project–will it get me a job? Into graduate school? Into the internship program?–and on the other hand, often much less confident about their approach, and therefore somewhat more dependent upon the consultant for evaluative feedback. In thinking about consultations for professional writing, we find that although the basic strategies we employ for other consultations work well, we also understand that the forms of the documents and their intended audiences may present unique challenges/approaches. In this paper, we will first examine three forms of professional writing most commonly seen in writing center consultations: resumes, cover letters, and personal statements. Because students’ quality of professional writing often affects their chances of realizing their real world goals, some consultants may feel compelled to step into the role of career coach and feel somewhat responsible for the success or failure of the consultees’ applications. To remove some of this unnecessary pressure, we suggest strategies to approach professional writing consultations as an opportunity to teach long term writing process-oriented skills ; University Writing Center