iWriteGigs

Fresh Grad Lands Job as Real Estate Agent With Help from Professional Writers

People go to websites to get the information they desperately need.  They could be looking for an answer to a nagging question.  They might be looking for help in completing an important task.  For recent graduates, they might be looking for ways on how to prepare a comprehensive resume that can capture the attention of the hiring manager

Manush is a recent graduate from a prestigious university in California who is looking for a job opportunity as a real estate agent.  While he already has samples provided by his friends, he still feels something lacking in his resume.  Specifically, the he believes that his professional objective statement lacks focus and clarity. 

Thus, he sought our assistance in improving editing and proofreading his resume. 

In revising his resume, iwritegigs highlighted his soft skills such as his communication skills, ability to negotiate, patience and tactfulness.  In the professional experience part, our team added some skills that are aligned with the position he is applying for.

When he was chosen for the real estate agent position, he sent us this thank you note:

“Kudos to the team for a job well done.  I am sincerely appreciative of the time and effort you gave on my resume.  You did not only help me land the job I had always been dreaming of but you also made me realize how important adding those specific keywords to my resume!  Cheers!

Manush’s story shows the importance of using powerful keywords to his resume in landing the job he wanted.

Sociology 001 - Introduction to Sociology

Chapter 1 – What is Sociology

 

Sociology

  • “The systematic study of human behavior and society”. 
  • Because “human behavior” and “society” are such broad terms, it is difficult to figure out what we’re talking about.  
  • Sociology is a very broad field, which makes it difficult to define.  

Sociological Imagination

  • The Sociological imagination is a concept created by American sociologist C. Wright Mills.
  • The application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. 
  • Sociology connects the “micro” (the small) to the “macro” (the large).  In the world of social interaction and human behavior, the micro encompasses the decisions and situations of individuals and small groups.  Think about the clothes you chose to wear today.  Your decision to wear those clothes can be thought of as a personal decision (a micro, small thing) in the world of social interaction.  How do we connect this to the “large”?  The “large” or “macro” are the social forces that are constantly at work.
  • As an example of this, let’s go back to the clothes you’re wearing.  Do they conform to certain gendered standards as to what kind of clothes men should wear as opposed to women?  If so, we can think about your decision to wear your clothes as conforming to a “larger” or “macro” social force: gender.
  • Thus, the sociological imagination helps us connect the “micro” (your choice in clothing) to the “macro” social forces (gender). 

Social Structures

  • Social Structures are the underlying regularities or patterns in how people behave in their relationships with one another.
  • Those things that we consider social also have an order that is followed.  
  • Example: Family.  A family is a social arrangement with people holding different roles.  There are “parent” roles and “children” roles in a typical family in the U.S. (different societies will have different roles to be played).
  • The way in which parents and children interact towards one another is not “random”; it is patterned. Children are usually expected to be respectful towards their parents and to obey their rules.  Parents are expected to provide food, shelter, protection, entertainment and love to their children.  
  • Thus, since these roles and behaviors follow certain patterns, we can speak of the family as a social structure.  
  • When we speak of the sociological imagination, what we are discussing is how we connect these personal situations and choices to these larger social structures.
  • Social inequality
    • In sociology, we speak of sexism, racism, poverty and other forms of inequality as reflecting a given social structure. 
    • Slavery in the U.S. was an institution that placed whites on top of the racial hierarchy over blacks. 
    • So in the past, it was clear that there were social structures in which whites were placed above people of color and men were placed above women in the social structure.  
    • The concept of social structure allows for exceptions to occur because the main focus are the larger social patterns, not the individual outcomes.  

Social Constructions

  • A social construction is often confused with a social structure. 
  • A social construction does not focus on the “regularities and patterns” that a social structure does; instead, it is an idea or practice that a group of people agree exists.  It is maintained over time by people taking its existence for granted.  
  • The key point here is that people “agree” that something exists.  Some things exist on their own, and some things exist because we, society, agree they exist. 
  • Example comes from geography.  Pieces of land and bodies of water exist on their own.  However, we have taken these geographical features, drawn boundaries around them, and created countries.  As such, countries are social constructions.  They only exist because we say they exist.  The border separating the United States and Mexico does not really exist on its own.  However, it has very real consequences separating people.  We can say that the border that separates these two countries doesn’t exist except in our collective minds.  

Functionalist Theory

  • Functionalism – A theoretical perspective based on the notion that social events can best be explained in terms of the functions they perform- that is, the contributions they make to the continuity of a society. 
  • They key concept in this theory is “function” or “purpose”.
  • Functionalism follows the logic that if something exists in society, it is because it somehow helps or contributes to the well-being of a society.   Functionalists would look at aspects of society (e.g. religion, division of labor, sports, schools, gender, etc.) and try to explain them by the finding the function or purpose that they serve.  
  • A functionalist might look at the emergence of religion and argue that religions help create the moral consensus necessary to create order and stability in a society, for example.  Some have argued that without religion, people would only care about selfish interests, not about their neighbors, and society would fall apart.  
  • Thus, functionalists could argue that societies have religion because religion helps create and maintain order and stability in society.

The Organismic Analogy 

  • Emile Durkheim, the first major functionalist, understood modern society as similar to an organism.  He called this the organismic analogy.
  • In an organism, the different organs and parts of the animal or plant work together for the benefit of the whole. 
  • A heart pumps blood, a brain commands movement, the lungs inhale oxygen, the immune system fights disease and infections, etc.
  • Similar to this, when we look at society, we can find different components with different purposes.
  • In any society, the family nurtures and teaches children the rules of society, schools educate and train children, hospitals and doctors care for people’s health, governments create rules and order, etc.  
  • Thus, in a modern society, there is interdependence between the different parts that are so different from one another; a shoemaker can make shoes, but can’t cure diseases, so she needs doctors; a doctor can cure diseases, but can’t make shoes, so she needs shoemakers, and this is the interdependence between the parts.
  • This interdependence is what holds modern society together, according to Durkheim, and this solidarity is called ORGANIC SOLIDARITY.  

Conflict Theory

  • Conflict theory is originally based on the works of Karl Marx.  
  • It helps to understand conflict theory by first examining the shortcomings of functionalism.
  • Functionalism focuses on stability, order and continuity; it assumes that all the institutions in society help make society stable
  • Functionalism focuses on the order that is created by people reaching a consensus and agreeing to the rules. 
  • In contrast, conflict theory picks up where functionalism stops.  While functionalism can help explain how societies reach equilibrium and remain stable, it does not do a good job in explaining how societies change. While functionalism explains order and consensus as necessary to society, it does not explain why disagreement, disorder, and social unrest occur, nor what role they play in society.  
  • Karl Marx had a materialist conception of history – material, or economic factors, have a prime role in determining social, historical change.  In Marx’s view, the economy was the driving institution or force in social change.  Thus, he looked at his own capitalist society made up of bourgeoisie (who owned the means of production – factories, farms, etc.) and the proletariat (who worked the means of production and did now own anything).  The main conflict between these two classes was economic, as the bourgeoisie (owners) paid small wages and exploited the proletariat (workers).  Thus, in Marx’s perspective, the proletariat would respond to this economic exploitation through a revolution that would overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish socialism as a new order. 
  • While Durkheim, a functionalist, saw consensus and order as something that people willingly accepted for the betterment of society, Marx, a conflict theorist, didn’t see consensus, but rather submission and obedience.  To Marx, those with power used their power to coerce the rest of society to fall in place and work for the benefit of the bourgeoisie (the capitalists who owned the means of production).  Thus, where Durkheim saw social harmony, Marx saw power and coercion.  

Symbolic Interactionism

  • Symbolic interactionism is grounded on the idea that the way we make sense of the physical and social world around us is based on meaning.
  • Humans assign meaning to objects, actions and concepts and act towards those things based on such meaning.
  • Thus, for example, our parents aren’t just people in our lives.  They have special meaning to us.  
  • But meaning doesn’t exist on its own.  We develop symbols in order to organize meanings.  
  • Symbols are items used to represent other items.  Most of the symbols we use come in the form of language.  Thus, when we create a word like “cat” we visualize a cat in our minds.  The word cat helps us think about cats, and the word mom helps us think about mothers.
  • Thus, when a friend introduces us to their “mom”, we would probably act differently towards them than if they introduced us to “a person”.