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Getting good recommendations is paramount, so I needed to get
good recommenders who were willing to go the extra mile. In my
case, my current manager was an obvious choice, but beyond this,
choosing recommenders seems like an art form.
To get good recommenders, I reckoned, I needed to have a history
with them. They needed to know me well and they needed to have
seen me perform. This doesn't happen over night, so I only asked
people who I had built a relationship with. I considered this
relationship the fundament based on which they might want to write
a recommendation for me, and it gave me several dimensions along
which to judge whether someone would be a good recommender.
- Choose recommenders that know you well.
Every business school will tell you to choose your manager
over your CEO (unless they coincide), because they want to hear
from someone who knows you well. So I resisted the temptation
of title: I didn't ask our CEO, who had handpicked me in Switzerland
but who had not worked much with me after this initial encounter.
To get a strong recommendation my recommenders needed to be able
to write authoritatively about me, not just in the abstract, but
also by giving detailed stories that showed how I was a human
being they cared about.
Usually, time adds to knowing you well. I choose recommenders
that had known me for some time. In my case, all recommenders
had known me for at least two years, and some of them had known
me for more than six years. With all of them, I had worked closely
at some point in time.
- Choose recommenders that have seen you perform.
Knowing you well and for a long time doesn't guarantee they
have something relevant to say about your capabilities. So I reviewed
my history with each potential recommender. If I could dig out
relevant stories, so could they.
- Choose recommenders that will take time for your recommendation
letter.
I believe that a short generic recommendation letter is one
of the worst things that could have happened to me: Not only does
it communicate to the admissions committee that my recommender
doesn't care much about me, worse, it communicates I had poor
judgement in choosing this recommender. A bland recommendation
letter would have questioned my people skills.
- If given the chance, choose an out-of-the-ordinary recommender.
Since so much of my application was about business, performance,
and leadership, I always feared I might bore the admissions committee
to death. After all, everyone is riding the same shtick. Vivid
essays may make your application easier to remember, but vivid
essays and vivid recommendations certainly will make it
stand out.
For example, I was lucky in that I had a colleague who fit
the Stanford peer recommender bill and who put in the effort of
writing an out-of-the-ordinary recommendation letter (of six pages,
as he told me)! Afterwards he told me that he was worried that
his excursions into humor, courage, and leading change might be
off topic, but I believe, without having seen it, that his letter
constituted a most excellent recommendation.
- Avoid inappropriate or unwanted recommenders.
In other words, I avoided asking my father or mother for recommendation
letters.
Some schools are also specific about who not to ask. For example,
business schools seem to prefer that you do not ask your
university advisors. Given my academic background, this ruled
out quite some strong recommendations! But I decided to stick
with their suggestion rather than to violate it.
- Manage your recommenders.
Once I had figured out who to ask, I helped them. If they didn't
know the procedure, I explained to them what the admissions committee
is looking for in a candidate so they could address it. Some I
reminded of shared experiences, specific jobs on which I performed
well, or anything I believed would help them answer the business
school questions and communicate a vivid picture of me.
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