Positioning Résumés and Cover Letters as Reflective-Reflexive Process

Although the résumé and cover letter genre is widely discussed in both popular and scholarly publications, discussion thus far has failed to acknowledge that the process of creating a résumé and cover letter has the potential for encouraging students’ reflective and reflexive capacities. This article suggests that business communication educators can realize this potential through three pedagogical changes: timing the assignment to coincide with reflective phases in the learning cycle, incorporating rhetorical context, and promoting abstraction and generalization. With these adjustments, the genre becomes a unique opportunity among reflective-reflexive documents because of its pervasiveness, timeliness, and rhetorical significance.