Memo

To: Date: Re: Jason Charnesky October 13th, 2011 Job Application Package From: Stephen Cantwell

This memo is intended to serve as a guide to my cover letters and resumes. This should help in the analysis of the cover letters and resumes as it highlights the type of jobs that the documents were written for and why certain aspects of my career and academic history were highlighted. The first job is titled Civil Engineer. It is an entry level full time position. From the description it appears to be a very general position in terms of what is required of the applicant. A person applying for this job would have to have a very broad background of civil engineering. This position also seems like a great opportunity to learn about what a civil engineer does on a daily basis and to gain a general knowledge of field work. Jacobs Engineering is the company who posted the first job. Jacobs is a massive civil engineering company which is listed as one of the top 5 civil engineering firms in the country in terms of overall performance and company success. It has offices all over the country but the job posted is in their New York City office. A company like Jacobs is looking for new hires that are willing to learn about the company and also are willing to do a good deal of traveling. My cover letter for Jacobs is more general than usual because the job description is for a general civil engineering position. I wrote about how I am a hard worker and highlighted my manual labor experience to back that up. I also gave a more general description of my responsibilities as a Thon operations captain to show that I am reliable and a leader. My resume for Jacobs is also more general but I chose to use some of the language from the job description in the resume to hopefully catch the employers eye. The first thing I added was that I am taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam at the end of October. It is listed in the job description as recommended so I saw it as an opportunity to prove how serious I am about engineering. Getting you FE from this test also proves that you are willing to move up in a company because for most positions it is a necessary title to have. I also rearranged my relevant courses so that the courses I thought would be more beneficial to the job were listed first. I also moved the project I completed to the bottom of my resume because

42

although I still believe it to be important, I thought other qualifications on my resume would be more relevant and therefore should be listed first. Some of the language I decided to reiterate in my resume from the job description was evaluated design drawings, Applied basic engineering principles, and planning. These terms are used throughout the description of the job so if they did happen to have a program that searches for key words these terms would appear. The second job is titled Superintendent. It is an entry level full time position. It is a construction management job which is a more specialized area of civil engineering. From the description it is a position that requires a lot of leadership and people skills. The applicant should also have a good knowledge of the construction process as well as an idea of the design process, because they will serve as a connection between the two. Organization is also a must for a job like this which requires a lot of planning. Turner Construction is the company that posted the second job. It is also a large company but it has the feel of a smaller company and a company that genuinely cares about and takes care of their employees. The company also has offices all over the country but the job posted is geared mostly towards the northeast because the description was sent from a representative from their Philadelphia office and research shows that they are about to begin several projects in that area in the upcoming year. Working for a company like Turner can entail a lot of travel and a lot of team building due to the reputation they have for caring about their customers and employees. My cover letter also highlights my manual labor experience. A construction management company places a good deal of value in employees that have actually done manual labor because they understand better what the construction workers they manage physically do on a daily basis. I also go into a more specified description of my responsibilities as a Thon operations captain and how they relate to construction management. In addition, I try to highlight just how much responsibility I have had and how I handled it. My resume for Turner is geared specifically towards construction management. The job descriptions not only highlight what I have done in relation to managing people and relating to construction but also use some of the terms in the job description they posted. For example I used descriptions like prepared reports, Develop economic analysis, coordinate and supervise set up and Quality Assurance/Quality Control and safety in construction process. I did this for the same reasons as the first jobs resume. I also made sure to put my experience in the class assignment on planning a construction project at the top of my resume because I felt it was important. I also omitted that I was taking the FE because it is not really recommended for those going the construction management route. I felt that the rearrangement of relevant courses to list those most related to the description first was also necessary. The job application packet that follows contains the cover letter and then resume for Jacobs engineering followed by that of Turner Construction. There is also an appendix at the end of the packet which shows both of the job descriptions and how they were obtained.

43