Unit 5: Identifying Career Trends in Your Industry
In Unit 4, you conducted research into your academic program to learn more about what skills you would get from your courses, and how you might leverage what you learned to secure an internship or job in your field of interest. Now you will conduct research to find the current trends in your desired industry and provide a brief summary of your findings. This assignment will be in the form of a professional email to your supervisor, Ms. Smith.
ScenarioImagine that you work for a company directly related to your major. Your company is preparing for expansion and your boss, Ms. Smith, has been asked to design an orientation program for new employees. As part of this process, Ms. Smith has asked you to do some research into the trends in your organization’s industry that new employees will need to know about and understand.
She has asked you to write a detailed email that identifies the three top emerging technology trends in your industry to incorporate into the new training, along with why they are the top three. If she likes your work on this initial research, she will ask you to take the lead on this portion of the training, allowing you to get leadership experience and name recognition within the organization.
While you have been with the company for some time, you haven’t had much opportunity to focus on training others. You think you have a sense of the industry but know you need to do more research to be accurate in your analysis. The ability to spot emerging trends in your industry is an important skill, and your boss wants to ensure that new employees are up to speed as quickly as possible.
Begin by reviewing this resource on conducting research on trends. It provides guidance on how to start your research and find the best sources for your project using the database tools available through UMGC’s Library. In addition to using the library databases, you can use other online resources to conduct additional industry research. Just remember to appropriately cite and reference your resources. You can learn more about citations and references at the Library’s Writing and Citing page. If you have questions about what type of citations to use, please ask your instructor.
Your assignment is to produce a well-researched email in which you identify three emerging trends in your industry and discuss each one briefly. While this will be in an email format, you may find the “How to Write an Effective 5-Paragraph Essay” video helpful.
Assignment Instructions :
- Compose a professional email (300 to 500 words) providing a response to the prompt above. You may use this template to format your email.
- Use the Subject Guides from the library, and additional industry websites to research information to include in your response. Be sure to use at least one source per trend.
- Use effective writing skills to communicate the information to Ms. Smith. You will want to go into enough depth to effectively address the subject, but take care to be concise.
