Recommendation woes -question on choice of recommender

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I have a choice among 3 for recommending me. All three have been enthusiastic to recommend me but my query lies on how much they would be able to be anecdotal in their recommendations

2 recommenders are my previous supervisors who I worked with over 4 yrs ending Feb 2010.
1 recommender is a former client who I worked with during a difficult pressure period in 2006-7

My initial idea was to keep my client as one recommender for all applications and the supervisors I would distribute across applications, choosing only one of them as appropriate.

While writing outlines I'm having 2nd thoughts about asking my client to fill a reco for me. Two reasons :-

1) For e.g. Haas asks for 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses exemplified. I had a good number of examples to choose from my work with both supervisors. With the customer, she has seen only the work I've done outside my organisation in discussions with customers, but she has not seen all the work and effort I have put behind the scenes in the team to deliver project bids, negotiate timelines, etc etc.
So I'm wondering if adcoms will find one reco as very enthusiatic spruced with anecdotes and the other a lukewarm one in terms of examples.

2) Another disadv is that the client has gone back to university to study to be a teacher. Doesn't have a email id with a domain name. She does some free lancing and has a name for her freelance org, but not a mail id that reflects that. I read on many websites that you need to have real good reasons to give a generic yahoo mail id and I'm worried the credibility might be low and not worth the risk ?

Should I decide against using the customer recommendation for these 2 reasons? Ofcourse i'll lose out on a customer recommender this way, which I think gives more backing ? Would find your advice very useful.

Thank you
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by jkhousto » Wed Nov 17, 2010 6:25 pm
Dear hitmis -

Thanks very much for your questions. I am sure others have encountered similar situations.
I agree with your initial logic, but I see the challenges (both real and exaggerated) that the client recommendation might present.

1) For Haas, I agree with you that it might be better to include the two professional contacts for your recommendations. The three weaknesses and three strengths question would definitely suit them better. Unless there are in-depth questions like this for every school which you are applying to, I am hoping that this will be the exception (but I do not know what schools you are considering)

2) As for the issues with your former client's email domain name, I am thinking this may be a case of "message board paranoia" and superstition. Usually a recommendation starts with "how do you know the candidate" type of questions. If she uses sufficient details that correlate to the rest of your application (dates of project, key challenges, your roles and responsibilities) I think this should be OK.

Depending on what schools you are applying to and how their recommendations are structured, I believe that the client reference could be very useful. Haas may very well be an exception.
I hope this helps.
Jennifer
Jennifer Houston, MBA
Consultant
mbaMission


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