[lg policy] Request for old job applications

[Dave Sayers]

Hello everyone out there, and apologies for cross-posting (hope it doesn't make anyone cross)...

During my one-year lecturing post here in Finland (*ahem -- you could to employ me next year! --
ahem*) I'm teaching a module called 'proficiency'. Now, that title seems a little amiss given the
frankly daunting proficiency my students already have in English. Anyway, I like a challenge, so I'm
giving them lots of complex texts to get their teeth into. The results are great so far, and I had
an idea for a future exercise: to establish the 'register' of successful job applications, and
unsuccessful ones too. (Who said you can't sneak in employability skills?!) The only trouble is
finding source material. Google is awash with people wanting to show you how to write a job advert
-- usually for money -- but I just can't find any straightforward examples of entire completed job
applications -- even successful ones, let alone unsuccessful ones. Believe me, I have a substantial
supply of my own unsuccessful ones, and a modest collection of successful ones too, but I really
need a range of authors for this to work.

So, my humble request... would anyone be willing to share their own previous job applications? What
would be absolutely ideal is job applications along with the original job advert -- to compare how
clearly the successful and unsuccessful ones speak to their respective job adverts. But there's
plenty of linguistic analysis to be done without the original job ad, so those would be useful too.

Of course, I would anonymise all applications, and also take every precaution to keep these from
going any further than my students. Unfortunately that means I can't do what I normally do and
provide an informative round-up of responses I've received. If I get any useful general tips for
this sort of thing though, or if enough people are happy for their anonymised applications to be
made public, then I'll make a roundup of some sort.

So, any volunteers...??

Thanks in advance.

Dave


--
Dr. Dave Sayers
Honorary Research Fellow, Arts & Humanities, Swansea University
and Visiting Lecturer (2012-2013), Dept English, Åbo Akademi University
dave.sayers at cantab.net
http://swansea.academia.edu/DaveSayers
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