Obtaining effective recommendation letters

Posted by admin on October 28, 2008 in Jobs

Recommendation letters are one of those standard issue things you need to obtain when job-hunting. Everyone seems to have one. The question is- does yours get you anywhere if you are looking for a new job? I am not in HR so I honestly could not tell you if a recommendation letter will put you over the top but if you have to get one to play the job hunting game, you may as well get the best one possible right?

To get back to first principles though, remember to ask your employer to write a positive recommendation letter. Sounds stupid (since the term does imply positivity) but you never know right?

Let’s face it, many employers who agree to write a recommendation letter would also be happy if you diplomatically suggested ghost-writing it for them for their approval; it saves them work and no one knows what you do better than you. So why not ghost-write your own effective recommendation letter?

Below is an example of a recommendation letter I once wrote for an employee I really liked (names, places and job functions and some contextually information changed for privacy reasons). I am not remotely sure if this is a good or bad letter (thoughts?) but, since they were such a good employee, I thought I would go the extra mile with a few extra features:

The one thing I have noticed about recommendation letters is it is full of generalities. A good “team player” means nothing without context. Thus, I tried to give concrete examples.

The other thing I did try to do is explain why the employee is no longer with me for reasons that had nothing to do with them. You have to be careful though. In some jurisdictions, you are prohibited from writing anything negative in a recommendation letter which may include reasons for departure if it is read as a negative (which begs the question of how many terrible employers wrote malicious recommendation letters to have these types of laws passed? What a strange world we live in).
When I first hired this employee, I knew this was not the field of work they wanted to work in so I asked them what they wanted to do and gave them work in their area of interest if they performed well. Thus, the letter is specifically tailored to getting them their next position in their desired field.

Here it is. Let me know your thoughts:

I am writing in support of Jane Anybody.

Jane served as our offices administrative assistant from January 1, 2006 to July 31, 2007 on a 35 work week basis before the business was sold and Jane decided not to work for new management but chose to take this opportunity to pursue a career in human resources.

During this time, Jane engaged in a wide variety of tasks for the office including book-keeping, accounts payable/accounts receivables, filing, general administration and dealing with the public. Having said that, Jane’s initial job functions were primarily general administration and dealing with the public. As Jane showed increasing competency she was delegated greater responsibility and an increase in compensation to reflect her value to the business.

As she is interested in human resources, Jane was delegated payroll functions and asked to assist in hiring summer help. She carried out both well as our book-keeper did not find any errors in her work and the summer student was a valuable addition to our work-place.

Jane is a dedicated team-player; she would often volunteer to stay late in order to complete her assignments and was well-liked in an office of 14 shared by co-workers and other businesses. She is a quick learner and takes instruction well; she was noted by my book-keeper to understand the book-keeping software quickly and increasingly mastered more options in said software. Finally, she was able to prioritize the various files and issues which arise in any office on a daily basis; she frequently reported on her progress on assignments to ensure that what needed to be done was completed first.

Accordingly, I would highly recommend Jane to join your organization as she would become a valuable member of your team. If you would like more information, please feel free to contact me.

…as I always preface my “job” related posts, I am not in human resources so I am not sure if this is the best recommendation out there (any tips would be great) but I believe it beats the plain vanilla “nice employee, worked hard, I recommend them” letters.

Next post, I address head-hunters from both the employer and employee side.

3 Comments on Obtaining effective recommendation letters

By A Lap Of The Blogs : WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo.com on October 30, 2008 at 11:13 pm

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By Riscario Insider on November 1, 2008 at 6:09 pm

I’m skeptical about recommendation letters. As an employer, I rarely received any and I didn’t place much weight on them.

Recommendations do matter, though. This is where social networking comes in. I encourage everyone to put their resume on LinkedIn.com with a customized URL (e.g., http://www.linkedin.com/in/promod). Some co-bloggers already have. You then link to contacts. Be selective — quality over quantity. Your contacts (managers, co-workers, colleagues, etc) can then easily give you recommendations that others can see. These public endorsements feel more credible and alive than a To Whom It May Concern recommendation letter.

By Drinkin’ Guinness in the 416 | Forever Knackered on December 7, 2008 at 5:34 pm

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