Do's and Don'ts - in more detail

• Do: Describe a few of your key responsibilities and duties. Consider expanding on how you meet one of more of your responsibilities.

  For example, a graphic designer responsibility might be "to create print advertisements for a magazine". Expanding on this responsibility, she might write:

  "I first disucss with the client on what message they are trying to convey in the ad (e.g., the client's position as having the most complete line of model railroad trains). Then I create two or three design concepts in rough form and present them to the client. Based on feedback, I continue developing one of the designs to a finished ad. I usually use QuarkExpress, a very popular design program, get stockphotos from iStockPhoto. Occasionally, I'll create a graphical element from scratch using CorelDraw."

• Do: Walk through a typical day on the job. If you do not have a typical day, elaborate on typical tasks or a typical project that you may work on.

  Some jobs, like some teaching and nursing jobs, are built on daily routines, even if the details of each day are unique. Other jobs may not have a daily routine but are project driven. For example, a construction project manager may write about the process of building a house from start to finish, preferably providing some real life examples decisions an challenges of such a project.

• Do: Write your response at a level that a high school senior or college student would understand and value.

  The goal of our survey is to provide information to students and career changers on what it's really like to do a particular job and what path they might follow to get to that position.

• Don't use a corporate job description - we're looking for your personal account of your job

  A response that looks like it came from a human resource department is usually not understandable to a student audience and usually does not tell the real story of how someone does their job. The occasional survey taker just copies and pastes the corporate job description - these surveys are generally not acceptable and will not generate a donation for the school.

• Don't paste in your resume

  We are not looking for a record of achievement but rather a personal account of what happens on your job.

• Don't use industry jargon/acronyms or, if unavoidable, explain any that you do use.

Avoid jargon as much as possible, but we realize it can't be helped sometimes. If you do use it, please make sure you give a brief explanation of what it means in terms that a student would understand.