I�m interested in what happens to a genre when it makes the transition from one medium, like print, over to another medium, like the Web interface. Does the genre change? And if it does change, would we say the technology causes the change? Saying that the technology causes the change would effectively lend support to the ideologically contentious stance of technological determinism. This is ideologically contentious to us communication researchers because it attributes agency to the technology at the expense of other factors such as individual rhetors� own rhetorical choices, not to mention social factors, political factors, and other factors that communication researchers regularly deal with. It tends to reduce rhetors to robots with little capacity for choice and creativity.

Nevertheless, communication researchers sometimes tread dangerously close to technological determinism because it is an obvious and convenient argument. For instance, Wanda Orlikowski and JoAnne Yates, who are among the most important researchers of genres in new media, recount the history of the memo genre from the 19th century to its recent e-mail incarnation. They observe that �[e]-mail is often used to convey messages that would not typically be handled through memos and that require no documentation� (p.317). Yet they conclude surprisingly glibly�for them�with the comment that �[t]he recent adoption of new communication media may be triggering the modification of existing genres� (p.320). This position treads dangerously close to technological determinism because it does not probe too far into the rationale of individual rhetors in using e-mail.

I�d like to propose that we can more insightfully understand the possible modification of genres not simply by looking at their technological delivery methods but also by inquiring into the thinking of rhetors.

Like Orlikowski and Yates, I too am looking at one key genre of professional communication that has had a history almost as long as that of the memo: the resume. And what I aim to illustrate here today is that with the migration of resumes from print onto the Web, rhetors are using the Web version of the genre not just to do the same activities with the same objectives as they did in print--but doing it in a �cooler� technologically-inspired interface--but also creatively to do different activities with different rhetorical objectives.

First, a bit of history about the resume. Randall Popken traces the resume from its emergence as �a sub-part of the letter of employment application� (1999, p.100), as can be seen in this example that Popken reproduces from a 1914 textbook (see illustration), through its emergence as a genre independent of the employment letter in the mid 1920s, to its eventual adoption of the term �resume� in the middle decades of the twentieth century (before then, the nascent genre was known by various terms, such as �data sheet,� �personal record,� �personal sheet,� �record sheet,� and several other terms (p.104)). So even in print, the resume was fashioned differently by different generations. Yet according to Popken, the print version of the genre has consolidated itself into a �resume formula� that �prematurely stabilizes the genre, too quickly creating closure on its possibilities� (p.105). Popken and others have called for research on whether and how the genre, in making the transition to the new media environment, might break out of this formula to become a discourse that Popken envisions as potentially �creative� and �humane� (p.109).

To address how rhetors might take creative advantage of the new medium to use the genre differently, I surveyed 100 authors of Web resumes.

Quantitative Web research is always plagued by sampling challenges and my research is no exception. To collect a sample, I used the AltaVista search engine, which, unlike its much better known rivals like Google, does not use a ranking procedure which prioritizes so exclusively the most visible sites. As well, AltaVista enables country-specific searches which are surprisingly accurate, allowing me to choose from several population samples, each from different countries, and moreover allowing me to avoid the inevitable preponderance of Americans in any Web population sample. To expand my sample further still beyond the elite class that tends to get found by search engines, I also conducted searches within the more proletarian population of sites posted for free by Geocities and Tripod.

Survey responses reveal that, on average, respondents had first posted their resume on the Web four years ago, had updated it a few times per year, had given it one or two design overhauls, and had usually maintained it fairly up to date at the time of the survey. Their sites are also large, with an average size of more than two hundred files of all kinds, and a surprisingly high number have their own URLs instead of the free organizational URLs that most of us use.

To illustrate�superficially at least--how far the genre has traveled from the early decades of the twentieth century, here is an illustration of one of the resumes in my sample (show illustration).

Of those of my survey respondents who have both print and Web versions of their resumes, about half report that their Web resumes include extra information. One respondent�s (#65) explanation that his Web resume is �more exhaustive� than its print counterpart offers a fitting characterization. Typically, such exhaustive information comprises links to portfolios and actual samples of work, as well as such esoterica as scanned reference letters, scanned images of awards, photographs of diplomas, and so forth. One respondent (#55) explained the utility of the Web for such purposes: �Since my photography resume is for photography, the web gives me the opportunity to put out my portfolio, which I would not be able to do otherwise.� �The Web gives him the opportunity��this explanation credits the technology with the capacity to do such things.

However, rather than just crediting the medium with so much agency and leaving it at that, I�d also like to illustrate how rhetors are exercising some of their rhetorical agency here. For instance, since print media have an obvious chronological precedence over Web media, we may tend to think that rhetors are blindly copying their print resume onto the Web, then adding a few of these extras triggered by the new technology. And there is certainly some evidence of that (in the number of pdf resumes, for instance, which presumably would be created from files that were intended for printing).

However, there is also evidence suggesting that some respondents were thinking of the Web first, before print, and using their Web resume not just in a way that�s derivative of its print uses. For instance, one respondent wrote, �I use my web resume as source for [my] print version. I.e. web version is up to date, print version is built from it. Useful in this regard.� (#95 Q.18b). Another wrote that his Web resume includes �photos, sound clips, links to other sites (thumbnails), overall design and colour that a paper copy doesn't have, and generally more detail on each subject[.] EVERYTHING is included and organized whereas when I hand out a one or two page resume to an employer I cull it to reflect what I think that employer is looking for rather than give them the whole thing and let them wade through it. I use the online resume to grab the content for other more specific resumes that I may hand out.� (#21 Q.8b) Most insightfully, yet another respondent explained, �[My Web resume] also helped me get all information about myself down in one place. I did not have to leave anything out but rather could link the pages in the order of priority. This gave me a lot of clarity about myself and subsequently whenever i have required a print resume i have picked my webresume and cut and pasted the info. . . .� (#65 Q.19)

So as these explanations reveal, some rhetors have over-endowed their Web resumes with what might seem in the print medium to be a surplus. They�re using their Web version to perform different roles in their overall rhetorical presentation, using it as an �ber-resource to collect / compose a much fuller record of their professional identities.

An even more striking indication that rhetors are using the Web version of the genre to serve different functions is the finding that slightly fewer than half of the respondents have posted their resumes on Web employment sites such as Monster.com, HotJobs, CareerBuilder.com, and so forth.

Indeed, when presented with a list of reasons for posting their resume on the Web, only slightly more than half chose that they had ever used their Web resume to seek new employment (see table). Over 40% had posted their Web resume for such ethos-building goals as enhancing their profile among colleagues within their field of employment, a task that has less precedent with print resumes since we have tended not to circulate print resumes as widely. A similar number, close to half, use their Web resume as a way of presenting themselves to people who have no connection with their employment, again a rather unprecedented use of the genre but perhaps a use that fills a genre vacuum in a new medium in which we have yet to come up with many other viable genres for self-presentation.

Web Resume Purposes

Why have you posted your resume on the Web? (Check all that have applied at one time or another)
Web Resume Purpose	Percentage
To seek new employment with an employer	56
To inform people who have no potential connection with my employment about who I am	46
To seek new clients for my self_employment	45
To enhance my profile among colleagues within my profession or my field of employment	42
To inform visitors to the rest of my Web site about who made this site	32
To make myself part of the new medium of the World Wide Web	29
To showcase my Web design skills	23
To practice how to make a Web page	21
To enhance my current employment	15

So in comparing and contrasting this range of purposes for the Web resume with the more limited range of the print resume, we can find some evidence to suggest that rhetors are being creative in appropriating the genre. They are using it for reasons beyond those for which it is popularly known, and a significant minority are not using it for its best known function, to get a job. Technological determinism alone cannot readily explain this kind of genre change, this kind of behavior or rationale among rhetors.

In summation, I have tried to illustrate that as the resume genre migrates to a new medium, it is not just the new medium�s technology that�s accounting for possible changes in and around the genre but also the agency of rhetors who are using the medium and the genre in original and unexpected ways.

Popken, Randall. (1999). The Pedagogical Dissemination of a Genre: The Resume in American Business Discourse Textbooks, 1914-1939.� JAC, 19.1, 91-116.

Yates, Joanne and Wanda J. Orlikowski. (1992 April). Genres of organizational communication: A structurational approach to studying communication and media. Academy of Management Review, 17.2, 299-326.