Professional interview

For this assignment, you are to interview a professional who practices (or has recently worked) in your desired profession. Please interview someone who has worked in the field within the last 5 years so that the information he or she gives you is as recent as possible.

Your job is to determine two pieces of information

1) the types of writing this professional completes. You may ask questions about daily writing tasks (emails, memos, instructions, lesson plans) and long-term or less frequent writing tasks (reports, proposals, white papers, contracts), and

2) the importance of these writing tasks to the success of the employee and the business/school/non-profit/organization.

Thinking about our first day of class and our discussion of all the different types of professional writing, you might need to prompt your interviewee. For instance, if you ask “what type of writing do you do?” and you receive the answer “none, really,” you might need to ask about specific tasks like email or order forms to get the person thinking. We don’t always realize just how much writing we do.

The assignment has three parts

• A memo (1 page, single spaced) that reports and reflects on the types of writing and their importance. (30 points)
• A thank you email or letter sent to your contact. (10 points)**
• A short (2-minute) presentation in class that highlights your findings.

You can see by the point distribution that the memo and thank you note are the most important parts of the assignment.

The successful assignment will

• Identify the field/profession of the person you interviewed.
• Explain what genres of writing professionals in the field use.
• Describe the importance of those writing tasks – how do they help the person do her or his job effectively? How do they ensure that the organization runs effectively?
• Complete a thank you note that uses an appropriate tone and professional language.
• Use professional language in the memo – the memo has been edited for clarity, spelling, and grammar