What to make of the skills we've been developing

In one way, this post is geared more towards a Technical Communications class, but in another way it speaks to the continued development of the skills we worked on in Professional Writing Technologies, too. When you create a resume, you're basically creating a marketing document. You're organizing information that makes the argument that you, as a product, are worth the money the employer is willing to pay as salary.

I told my Tech Writing class, during the Spring '09 semester, that it's "better to admit than omit," as a general rule. That is, it's better to deliver all relevant information up front, even if some of it is unfavorable, rather than have that information rear its ugly head down the road and have a reader ask, "Why wasn't I told about this back then?!"

However, I also admitted (see, there it is in action) that, like "spin" or any other language manipulation, there's omitting and then there's "omitting," if that makes sense. A writer can leave out information in an effort to divert attention or even mislead (BAD), or a writer can leave out information because it's not really relevant to the rhetorical situation.

I thought about that subtle distinction today when I saw this article on Yahoo! Lots of blog have written about job-hunt issues like polishing up your resume, not including dumb (even offensive) information, and controlling public information that might hurt your resume. This Yahoo! article, though, deals with omitting information about your marketable skills because they make you seem "overqualified," a word I've always found problematic.

Depending on the field you're interested in, it can be a rough time to look for a job. If you're a world-famous rocket-scientist, for example, but you can't find work in that field, should you leave off that part of your skill set so you can get the 6th grade science teaching job you found? Whereas NASA might look at those lines of your resume and think, "Mmmm, looks good," Austin Independent School District might look at it and think, "Yikes, we can't afford her/him!"

In that case, what do you do with your valuable marketing information (about how skilled you are)?

Blogs don't get no respect?!

I know that classes are over for the summer, but neither information nor technology stops, does it? Anyway, in case any of the ENG 313J students come back to this blog, I thought this article was interesting.

Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently admitted to plagiarizing content from a political blog. She claims that the slip-up was unintentional (where have I heard that before?), but she readily admits that the words aren't her own.

I have to admit that it makes me wonder if (and why) communicators in "traditional media" consider blogs less valid. perhaps like it's OK to take content from them. When I was helping create blogs for a marketing group here in Austin, I noticed that news came out on many of the blogs I was watching a day or two before it hit mainstream media.

I think there's an important message there about the nature of communication inherent in blogging. Who do we think writes blogs? Are they people with "insider" knowledge? If so, or even if not, is transparency what makes their communication necessary?