Paper details:

FORMAL WRITTEN REPORT Students will complete a short career exploration project in which they conduct company research on one selected prospective employer of interest. The purpose of the short written report assignment is to present the results of the career exploration project.

The short written report will contain five individual assignments completed during the first part of the semester. Students who attend class regularly and complete each of the earlier assignments should not find the short written report to require much additional time to complete.

Students are expected to complete and submit their own work. No portion of the short report—or any of the preliminary assignments–may be copied from another student or undocumented source. Reports found to be copied will receive a reduced grade based on the amount of copying. Likewise, students who knowingly or unknowingly allow other students to copy their work will also receive a reduced grade based on the amount of copying.

Assignment 1

Research One Company/Organization for General Company Information in at Least Five Secondary Sources and Organize That Information into Three Main Topical Areas

A. Select one company or organization for which you would like to work after graduation. Do not select an industry, product, or service. The company does not need to have an opening now for a position of interest you. You may select a company or organization of any size, location, or industry. You may select the same company/organization researched for Oral Presentation 1, or you may select a different company. You may switch to a different company later if you are unable to find the required information (Assignment 1B or Assignment 4) or simply lose interest in the company.

B. Research the company selected in Assignment 1A in at least five secondary sources. The desired company information may come from any five reliable sources (books, journal, Internet, company website, social media sources, blogs, company employees, etc.). Information may be taken from multiple sites from the company webpage—or from any webpage; however, those multiple sites would be considered a single source.

C. Obtain information for any three company topics of interest (i.e., products or services provided, company history, recent company news, customers, competitors, advertising or marketing campaigns, financial information, competitors, etc.). At least one of the company topic areas must be able to be subdivided into subtopics. Information for larger companies may be located in the Hoovers Online (Mergent) electronic database, available through the University Library. In a later assignment you will prepare a visual aid (Assignment 4) to include with the report, so be on the lookout for possible statistical information that could be converted into a visual aid.

D. Complete the preparation outline, which appears inside the “Written Report Assignment” Learning Module. The outline will be used in Assignment 2 to “flesh out” or develop the report. Refer to the format shown in Format Guide 1.