Help with Meeting the Word Minimum

Here are a few tips to help you meet the word minimum:

• Try to think of a few examples of projects and common tasks of the job.

  If you are a marketing communications manager, you might give an example of a marketing program that you created, some of the key decisions that need to be made, the kinds of vendors you needed to work with, what made the program a success, etc.

  If you are a development engineer, you might give an example of a product that you created, the tools you used to design it, one or two of the interesting challenges that you needed to overcome, lessons you learned from the experience, etc.

• Elaborate on one or more of your key job responsibilities. For example, if you are a high school guidance counselor, instead of just writing:

  "I help students find suitable colleges."

  you might expand on this task and write:

  "I help students find suitable colleges by first determining what they would like to study, what kind of social environment they would like, if there are particular extracurricular activities of importance, if there are geographic preferences, etc. Then I consult numerous resources such as CityTownInfo.com, Petersen’s and Princeton Review that help the student and I develop a set of candidate colleges…"

• Try to provide insights that go beyond just listing responsibities. Consider writing about the challenges, rewards, misconceptions, flexibility, required personal qualities, pitfalls, etc. that are associated with your line of work.

  Examples:

  • "Being a Phlebotomist sounds like a repetitive job, but you'd be surprised the number of interestting people you meet during the course of the day"
  • "A great thing about being a lawyer is that there are so many different jobs that you can use it in - you can be in Human Resources, you can be a negotiator, you can defend civil rights, you can work part-time as a mediator (great for parents who want to stay at home)"
  • "The key to be a good salesperson is being the advocate of the customer - if you go out of your way to make your customer succeed, you will find sales to be rewarding personally and financially."
• Temporarily skip the question and try the next one – you may be able to write more on another question to make up for the one you’re stuck on. Remember, the goal is to write at least 300 words for all of the essay questions combined.
• Read the examples provided for each answer. It may trigger some ideas on what you can write about your job.