Letter Report and Short Report

These are two separate assignments, please read thoroughly.

Assignment 1

 
Assignment: Letter Report
Readings: Lesikar’s Chapter 12, pages 395 – 397
                  Sample Letter Report. pages 396 – 397
                  Lesikar’s Appendix B, pages 635 – 639
Length: 750 words minimum, not counting Works Cited
Audience: Your supervisor, colleagues, and clients
Purpose: To research and recommend career advice to potential clients
Format: Formal business letter style, including the following elements:
                    Return Address (or you may use a Letterhead)
                    Date
                    Inside Address
                    Salutation, followed by colon
                    Letter contents
                    Closing
                    Signature Block
                    Second Page Heading
                    MLA-style parenthetical, in-text references for any source material used
                    MLA-style Works Cited List
Writing Situation: You work for a company1 whose mission is to offer advice to college students who are considering their career options. In today’s meeting, your supervisor asked you to research the career outlook in one of the Occupation Groups listed in the “Occupational Outlook Handbook” section of the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website available at this address: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/2
For example, if you click the Education, Training, and Library link in the Occupational Groups list, you might research the career of High School Teacher. If you click the Healthcare link, you might research the Nursing career. You may select any career from the ones listed on the BLS website.
Assignment Requirements: Write a 750-word (roughly two full pages, single-spaced) Letter Report in which you present your findings about the career outlook for the occupation you have chosen to research. You should include the following information, in addition to any other relevant material you find in your research:

Employment prospects
Typical jobs
Advancement opportunities
Salary range
Career advantages/disadvantages
Typical responsibilities
Your recommendation (see below for more information about this important section)

To succeed on this assignment, you will need clear recommendations in your Report. The specific audience for this part of the Report will be the potential clients who seek advice about their careers. Based on your research, what would you recommend to a college student who is interested in the career you have researched in this Report?
In addition to the BLS website provided above, you might also search for information disseminated by professional societies. These groups will often publish useful statistics on salaries, working conditions, and other information about the field. For instance, the NSA and AICPA are both professional societies for Accountants. Whatever sources you use should be credible and professional or academic-based. Do not consult sources such as Wikipedia, Ask, or other sites whose information might not be reliable.
You might also consider interviewing someone who currently works in this field although that is not a requirement of the assignment. 
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1 In writing about the company in this assignment, you should feel free to make up a company name.
2 You must use this website in your research.

Assignment 2

 
Assignment Instructions: Short Report
Instructions for Graded Writing Assignment 3: Short Report
Reading(s):

Lesikar’s Chapter 12, pages 375 – 407

Sample Short Report, pages 386 – 394

Instructions:
For this final Graded Writing Assignment, you will compose a Short Report based on one of the scenario’s outlined below. You must choose one of the scenarios listed below; papers submitted reflecting a scenario other than those listed below (even those listed in your text) will not be given credit or graded.
Assignment Requirements:
Write your findings as a well-organized Short Report containing the following key elements:

A title page
Document headings to separate parts of the report
At least two sources with brief in-text citations as shown in the sample Short Report (pages 386-394)1
Interpretation of your findings in terms of their likely significance to you and your readers.

Assignment Notes:

Create all pieces of the Short Report as one (1) document.
The Short Report should be 1,200-1,500 words in length. Remember to focus on the content, not just writing to fill a word requirement.
You will upload your finished document to the appropriate assignment in Business Communications. Instructions on how to upload are available in Topic 12.

Scenarios:
Option 1) The graphic design shop where you work as the account manager is doing well. Just last year the owner hired three new designers and a receptionist, bringing the total number of employees to 14. But with growth comes certain headaches, and one of them is figuring out how to regulate employees’ Internet use. Currently, employees can download anything they want from the Internet and view any website they wish.
The owner’s IT person has alerted him to several problems. One is that the designers are downloading any and all software that they think sounds “cool” – even software in beta versions that still have a lot of kinks. As a result, their computers lock up or malfunction and the IT person has to spend hours troubleshooting the problem to get it resolved.
Two, there is concern over what Internet sites employees are viewing, specifically those that are inappropriate for the workplace. Overall, the IT person is worried about security breaches resulting from these downloads, inappropriate website visits, and other Internet activities.
It’s time for a policy to be developed governing Internet-use and your boss thinks you’re just the person to help write it. Your assignment is to study the current wisdom on the workplace Internet policies and send your findings to your boss and the IT person as a short report, including a proposed Internet-use policy that might be implemented.

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1 Please note that the sample shown in your book is a Mid-length Report and therefore contains some sections that you will not need for the Short Report. For instance, you will not need the letter of transmittal or the executive summary.