The Complete Guidebook To Getting A Perfect MBA Recommendation Letter - Part II
Firstly, I would like to apologize for the brief hiatus in updating the newsletter as I was moving to a new country and dealing with the challenges that come up with it. Anyways lets truck on!
So in this Part-2 of the Recommendation Guidebook, I share with you practical 4-Phase process on ensuring the perfect recommendation letter for your application. Remember that the ground rule for a recommendation – Its not okay to write your recommendation letter. However, it's okay to quality control the content!
Phase – I: Understand what is asked
The purpose of a recommendation letter is simple: It is an external validation of your candidature. The recommender is a trusted link or a bridge between the applicant and the admissions committee. Without this trust, your application is an un-validated hypothesis and adcom folks don’t prefer stuff that is not validated.
Ok so now hopefully you understand the purpose of the recommendation. Let’s focus our attention on the other aspect – What exactly is being asked in the recommendation letter?
Different schools have different formats but here is a broad framework of what your recommender may be required to complete in the letter
a) Objective Assessment – Rating the candidates on a point scale for characteristics not limited to
- Creativity
- Analytical
- Leadership potential
- Integrity
- Communication skills
- Collaboration
- People management
- Ownership
Typically the school would like to understand the areas of strength and weakness from this assessment. One typical mistake that happens here is when over-enthusiastic and eager to prove themselves kind of candidates request their recommenders to score them exceptionally well on all these parameters. Well if you are excellent in every aspect, why do you want to go to school? So the key learning is
Allow yourself to be vulnerable and be transparent with your weaknesses. This works in your favor. Discuss this with your recommender!
However, in my opinion, there is a rider to this- Typically I would not advise being low on Leadership or Integrity because if you are then it will be a red flag.
b) Subjective Assessment – In this section, the recommender is expected to write a well-crafted essay detailing
- Relationship to the candidate
- Description of instances where candidate showed key strengths
- Description of key improvement areas
- Leadership potential of the candidate
- Career expectations from the candidate in 5/10 years time
So as you can see it’s a fair amount of work that needs to go in a recommendation letter and therefore I would recommend you give at least 1 month to your recommender to come up with the refined recommendation letters!
But how do I select who to ask for a recommendation? Glad you asked for this brings us to Phase-II
Phase-II: Who to ask for recommendations?
If you haven’t already, please read the first part: https://theunofficialmba.substack.com/p/the-complete-guidebook-to-getting
We recommend the following ground rules for selecting the right recommender. You should choose some who
- Shares a good rapport with you
- You trust Highly
- Can write well and has good communication skills
- Has directly managed you
- Has worked with you for long
- Has been deeply involved in your own professional development
- Can spare the time to write and review a good recommendation letter for you
- Is committed to your success
- Preferably has an MBA and possibly an alumni of your target school
If you look above, I have nowhere mentioned about the necessity of the recommender being a CXO in the organization. You will be better off asking someone who has directly managed you and knows you well over someone who is at the top of the food chain in your organization but barely knows you. I cannot emphasize this point enough.
Select recommenders based on their credentials to assess you and not their professional titles
In the last point, I make an exception and call out that if your recommender has an MBA or is an alum of your target school it may be a good idea to select them. However, make sure that they are able to write well and decisively about your candidature.
So with the recommender in place lets move to Phase III
Phase III: Set up the context with a virtual meeting
Before your recommender starts writing good stuff about you, it’s a good idea to have a 1:1 virtual Video session with your recommender. During this session, I recommend you to discuss the recommendation letter topics in detail and take feedback from the recommender on the various aspects of the letter.
Conducting virtual session offers a powerful way to initiate the recommendation process as it’s a collective brainstorming between you and your recommender. The brainstorming will give enough food for thought to the recommender when they sit down to actually write the recommendation letter at a later stage. Do record the session (after taking their permission) and send over the recording to your recommender for their reference
Phase IV: Refine the narrative
Now that you have a first recommendation draft, I would advise you to set-up another short session and ensure that the narrative is consistent with the storyline of your own candidature. Typically some edits may be required at this stage in order to ensure grammatical accuracy and a compelling narrative. Therefore, as I said earlier, choose someone who is committed to your success and can take out the time to help you develop the winning recommendation letter.
So hopefully with this guided series, you have been able to bust some common myths around the recommendation process and understand what it takes to develop the perfect recommendation letter that supports your application narrative.
Want to know more about how to conduct these sessions? Click on Connect me to reach out!