COM 1100 Unit 3 assignment: career technical skills

This assignment has two research steps that do different jobs, and treating them as one is the mistake that costs most. O*NET gives you the occupation in general: a standardised description of what people in that role typically do, with technology skills listed as software categories rather than as brand names. The job posting gives you one employer at one moment, with the specific products they use and the specific things they will ask about in an interview. The interesting part of the assignment is the gap between them, so keep the two sources visibly separate in your document, under their own headings, and then compare them at the end. A paper that merges the two sources into one list has thrown away the comparison the final bullet is asking for, and it also loses the easiest observation available: employers ask for products, while occupational data describes categories.

When you summarise the technology skills from O*NET, use its own categories rather than paraphrasing them into vagueness. The profile lists things like spreadsheet software, medical software, database user interface and query software, presentation software, or enterprise resource planning software, usually with example products attached. Those categories are what you should quote, because they are checkable and because the marker can see you actually visited the site rather than guessing. Then choose five and, for each, say what you can currently do and what would count as being competent, since the assignment asks how your experience and education have helped and will help. Naming this course is legitimate and expected — the instruction says including this course — but tie it to something specific you did rather than to the course in general. The Word formatting exercise, the folder structure, the calendar block: any of those is a better sentence than saying the course improved your digital skills.

The job posting section needs care because a link alone earns nothing. Copy the link, then write a brief description in your own words, then extract the technical requirements the posting actually names, which are usually more specific than the occupational categories. Finish with an honest audit split into two lists: skills you already have and skills you will need to acquire. Being candid here is worth marks, because the competency being assessed is identifying skills related to a job, not claiming to be qualified. If a posting names a product you have never used, say what you would do about that — a free tutorial, a course, a certification — and you have turned a gap into a plan. Keep it to one to two double-spaced pages, and remember that no sources beyond the websites you searched are required, so the space is better spent on the audit than on background about the industry.