Department - Author 1

Communication Studies Department

Degree Name - Author 1

BA in Communication Studies

Date

12-2011

Primary Advisor

Jnan Blau

Abstract/Summary

To answer the question, which rhetorical strategies are most persuasive to university graduates regarding hiring and recruitment, I surveyed three classrooms with a questionnaire that gauged university graduates attraction to three different types of rhetorical strategies. The rhetoric came from three major businesses that recruit university graduates: College Works Painting, Peace Corps, and Hewlett Packard.

Each one of these businesses uses a different type of strategy to recruit university graduates. College Works Painting uses an Experience Illusion strategy based on the premise that the company will help train university graduates to become managers and leaders in business. Peace Corps’ uses an Altruistic strategy that sells the idea that university graduates will have superhero-like jobs, helping others. Hewlett Packard’s rhetoric is classified, in my research, as being a Fun strategy, as they advertise fueling individual’s curiosity.

I predicted that the Experience Illusion strategy would be most attractive to university graduates, but, I found, through my analysis of the survey data, that the Altruistic strategy is the most attractive strategy to university graduates. I realized, though, that my survey could be expanded upon to yield a more accurate representation of university graduates’ attraction if a new survey were created. If a survey with more options of the same rhetorical strategies, the Experience Illusion, Altruistic, and Fun concepts worded in different ways, was administered to university graduates, the perceived entrapment of succumbing to the rhetorical strategy would be less thus yielding more true and representative results.

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