How I wrote a recommendation letter – what would you add?

Toward the beginning of last month, I received an email from one of my favorite college professors asking for a recommendation. He’d been nominated to receive an award as an outstanding part-time faculty member. I certainly don’t have time to write extra letters, but he’s a friend and an outstanding part-time faculty member, so I agreed.

…Even though I didn’t know what to do.

Writing recommendation letters is one of those skills most of us don’t consider too often. At least I don’t. Not many people want my recommendation, I suppose. :)

But as huge fan of recommendations, I think it’s important to develop this skill – it can certainly carry over into informal recommendations in daily conversation.

So this is what I did to write my letter. I’ve also included some questions for you because I’d like your help in improving my (and other reader’s) recommending skills.

Googled it

I had written one of these letters about two years ago. Two years ago. So yeah, I had totally forgotten what I was doing.

Google provided some templates, which I used to structure of my letter. I’m all about creativity and breaking rules to stand out, but I thought it was a good idea to figure out what rules I was breaking.

Do think a template is a good idea?

Learned about the audience

I don’t know if this is always the case (I imagine it often is) – I didn’t know who I was writing to. I knew it was some committee, but the name didn’t reveal much. So I looked them up.

This took some extra work on my part, but I think having at least a few faces helped me sound personal without too much casualness. (Like I didn’t use the word “casualness” in the letter.) It also gave me some background on what they were looking for in a candidate.

Is that too much work considering the benefits don’t seem that impressive? What do you think?

Focused on stories

This is a big problem with my writing – I don’t tell enough stories. I usually ignore the voice telling me to include more stories here because I’m writing how-to posts. I’ll try to change that. With the letter, though, I specifically focused on writing detailed stories and nothing else.

  • I told about how my professor used an unusual exam/quiz combo to help students know where they stood in the class.
  • I explained about how he’d shared about his former life as a lawyer.
  • And I gave a few examples of when he’d gone beyond the classroom to help and get to know his students.

Do you think writing primarily with stories is a good idea or do people want “just the facts (ma’am)”?

Include something (slightly) negative but provide a rebuttal

Without any negativity, I think most recommendation letters feel fake, especially from a business perspective. It’s one thing to know someone you get along with well – it’s quite another to give the impression that a professor is universally perfect.

So in my letter, I included a brief section about why some students didn’t like his class.

What do you think – is that a good idea?

Ended with a recommendation I’d given to my brother

Instead of ending by recommending this professor for the award, which of course anyone writing a recommendation letter is going to do, I ended with a story of how I recommended him to my younger brother. And my brother is now trying to get into another class with him.

I think if I were reading the letter, I’d appreciate some creativity toward the end instead of a fizzle out that’s been done a quintillion times before.

But is it better to stick with a traditional template?

Now that I’ve shared what I did, I want to open this up (as if it’s ever closed) for you to share your thoughts.

  • Have you written recommendation letters, for professors or otherwise? How did you do it? What would you add, or subtract, from what I did?
  • Perhaps you’ve been on the other side – perhaps you’ve had to read these letters. As a reader, what do you suggest?
  • Are recommendation letters even worth the effort? Here’s something I didn’t address – how would you decide when to write them?

I’d love to get your input on how to best serve others through these letters.

Serving Suggestions:

(1) Write a letter of recommendation. Even if it’s just for practice, I think you’ll learn a lot about serving because you have two (sometime competing) interests to keep in mind: the one being recommended and the one reading the recommendation (to say nothing of your own effort to write it).

(2) Share about your experiences with writing (or reading) letters of recommendation. (Or even if you have no experience, I’d love to hear your thoughts.)