Workplace Writing

Writing for work is a lot different from writing for school and I've not had some first hand experience with this as part of my job is to send out job offers to people and respond to emails. The job offers have a standard format however I like to personalize each one depending on if I met the person and had some input in their interview process. With school I believe that things can be a lot more personal as we can go from opinion based papers to facts or papers/speeches about things that interest us. The 5 things that stuck out to me in chapter 6 of the textbook were 1. Make efficient use of your time. 2. Do your homework. 3. Keep your eye on the details. 4. Avoid jargon. 5. Use transitions. 

Making efficient use of your time is incredibly vital not just for writing but for everything in an internship, when i’m not busy I like to make use of my time by finding something to do or learning a new skill. For the parts of my internship where I do writing I have Friday afternoons for the offer letters and I ensure that my friday mornings are very productive so that I have enough time to complete the job offer task. 

The doing my homework component doesn't work like library research for school however it does involve getting the right information from the right people or doing my own research with the data bases for what I need. This includes looking on career lister to find information on candidates and asking questions when responding to emails.

Keeping my eye on the details, specifically organization, is an important process to workplace writing as I learn as I go and so staying organized is very important so that I don't get confused or fall behind. When writing I follow an organized structure like I would if I were writing a paper with a clear beginning, middle and end. My recruiter pitch is also set up to have a presentation, rehash and close.

Avoiding jargon is important in professional  writing as it’s very easy to lose the boundaries between what we can say face to face in a conversation with each other vs what we would say professionally when talking to someone. Certain phrases that i’ve learnt through this internship are some that I feel comfortable discussing with management and my coworkers but would not want to use it in any of my job offer letters as it seems unprofessional and could also be confusing to them. 

I’ve learnt a lot about transitions from my recruiting pitch as this isn't just a written out speech but something that we need to use every single day with hundreds of people a week. The transitions are important so that the people on their other end of the phone understand where we are at in the recruitment speech and what is to follow. In the job offer letters I also use transitions so that things seem simple to the receivers.