Developmental Instructional Materials
Session 1
The first instructional material to be used to present to students on resumes, interviewing skills, and cover letters by the career advisor will be Microsoft PowerPoint. This presentation technique is vital because it involves the engagement of multiple learning styles, improves students’ focus, increases visual impact, and increases interactivity and spontaneity. I will have my projector display the presentation on the board. All the guidelines will also be displayed on my computer’s home screen.
I will give the students a brief overview of the presentation on the developmental instructional materials.
“Today, you as students will have an interactive discussion and get to know more on how to write resumes, cover letters, and interviewing skills. Before we begin, let me project to you on the introductory part and on how we are going to be interacting in this session.”
“Let me start by asking a simple question. Does any of you know what resumes or cover letters, or interviewing skills are? (Allow discussion and responses). “Today in this hall, we are going to define cover letters, resumes, and interviewing skills. We are also going to cover more on different formats of the three writings (Maheshwary & Misra, 2018). Finally, we will learn how to write the best resumes, cover letters and sharpen our interviewing skills. As I continue to expound on the three, I want you to be trying to figure out how they look like and how you can write them.”
“I am going to present to you first on resumes where we start by defining what resume is. There is no better tool than the resume letter when it comes to self-promotion. There is no separate resume. It is normal for a resume letter, also known as a job letter, new value letter, or res-u-letter, to be two pages long. I hope as per now everybody now pictures and knows what a resume letter is.”
“Secondly, we are going to expound on cover letters. We find that it is a document of description linked to complementing an additional document, such as a resume or a CV (da Silva, 2020). You have to know that a cover letter should always be short and precise and should always never exceed a single page. Any query concerning the cover letter? Okay, the silence means that you probably have grasped the content.”
“Lastly, before I use another mode of the presentation, I want to take you through interviewing skills. As you can see on the board, you’ll need to have the right interview skills to be more successful in an interview for a new job (DeVargas & Stormshak, 2020). Many interview skills are not traditional; rather, they assist applicants in preparing for the interview and advising them throughout the interview process. I hope you are now getting the difference between the three forms of letters?” (Allow students to have a low tone discussion so that they can digest the differences you have just taught).
Session 2
“This second session am going to interact or present to you what we have learned using short videos. This is because you will quickly be drawn by these well-produced videos and help you understand widely. Using videos as the presentation mode will help you as my audience “wake up” and pay attention to what I am presenting on. It’s now easy to have a conversation with you since I can see that you have already been captivated by videos. As you can see, the first video elaborates more on the format, style, and appearance of a resume. At this point am sure you are all good to go or is there any question before we proceed? Okay, no question.”
“The second video is on the formatting of a cover letter. You agree that a cover letter is short and precise, as I expounded earlier in my presentation. You have to align your ideas well and make sure that there are no errors and repetition, as you can see in the video as an example.”
“The last video on my computer, as you can see on the projection, is on interviewing skills. The video outlines clearly what to consider to have good interviewing skills. I hope you are all with me.”
Session 3
“To wind up on my presentation today, we are going to use Kahoot, which is an online gaming platform. I am sure this will enable you to recall everything we have studied today, cover letters, resumes, and interviewing skills. Their formats and different styles are used in presenting them. As projected, you can see the quizzes on the three (DeVargas & Stormshak, 2020). I would like you to write them down for further reference and remembrance in your free time.” (Allow every student to write down before finishing the presentation and waiting for the next instruction).
“You will now have time to practice on writing resumes and cover letters and also on how to have better-interviewing skills. Feel free to work in groups with your fellow students and ask questions related to your understandings. Ask your teachers more on those write-ups, and then you will be good to go.”
References
Da Silva, J. T. (2020). Simplify manuscript submission and optimize authors’ resources by eliminating formatting and cover letters. European Science Editing, 46, e52063.
DeVargas, E. C., & Stormshak, E. A. (2020). Motivational interviewing skills as predictors of change in emerging adult risk behavior. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 51(1), 16.
Maheshwary, S., & Misra, H. (2018, April). Matching resumes to jobs via deep siamese network. In Companion Proceedings of the the Web Conference 2018 (pp. 87-88).
