Strategizing And Establishing Ties For Recommendations

by Stacy Blackman Consulting, Dec 11, 2010

After you have identified potential recommenders, focus on spending quality time with these individuals. You should potentially even re-establish ties with someone from a previous company or an old college professor in order to find out who would be most pleased to write a letter of recommendation. Trust me, the recommenders attitude and commitment level are key.

You should look for a good spread among your recommenders so they can write about you from different angles. Getting the partner from the pharmaceutical consulting project and also the partner from the chemical consulting project might not produce the letters of recommendation that show the full range of your capabilities.

Overall, I believe you should give these individuals approximately six weeks of advance warning before the deadline and provide them any materials three to four weeks before the date you would like the recommendation submitted. You should make sure that these individuals understand what you would like them to focus on. For this, you should budget a few hours.

All applicants need to figure out what their recommendations should say and how they should complement the points they themselves bring up in their business school essays. Even a recommender with the best thoughts might end up writing a weak recommendation if it does not complement the Brand You that is in the remaining essays. As an example, a letter of recommendation that emphasizes your quantitative capabilities doesnt do much for you if you tried to establish your brand around innovative leadership.

You should provide your recommenders with a list of stories that will jog their memories. Very specific anecdotes, like Remember the time in situation ABC where you said the solution I proposed saved the company $10 million? Some of these memories can be ideas you yourself raise in the essays, while others might be new material that only the recommender employs.

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