Have you ever had to ask someone for a letter of recommendation?  If you have, you probably know that it isn’t an easy task.  But it shouldn’t be a problem at all.  It shouldn’t be that difficult to ask someone if they could do you a favor.  In this post I am going to give some advice that will help ease the process of getting letters of recommendations and guarantee that you will have good letters written about you.

You Must have a Relationship

If you don’t have a relationship with someone, do you think they can write a letter about you?  Someone that doesn’t have a relationship with you will just write a generic letter, a letter that all employers or grad programs have seen.  So if you want professor to write a good letter of recommendation, you better start working on building that relationship.

Maintain the Relationship

It’s your first semester of your Junior year at college, and you have a professor that you really like.  Through out the course of the semester you build a good relationship with him.  But once the semester is over you never speak to him again, until a year later when you come to his office asking for a letter of recommendation.  There is a chance he doesn’t even remember you.

To avoid this issue you need to stay in contact with your professors even after the course is over.  Simply emailing the professor a link to an article that may be of interest to him is enough to keep you in his mind.  Or stop by the office one day just to say hello.

Target Practice

I know it sounds awful, but you need to target the people you want letters of recommendations from.  Unfortunately, like many things, there is always a bit of politics to be played. Usually you will have worked with the person and it won’t feel like you are really targeting them, but when you first start out consider what type of letter that person could write.  Before you start working on research or a project with a professor consider if they are the best professor to work with, and will they increase my chance of getting to where I want to be. It shouldn’t be your only factor, but you should at least ponder the idea.

Who Should I Ask?

It all depends on what you need the letters for.  If you need the letters for getting into grad school, you need to ask professors, specifically the professors you had worked with on research. If you are going into the business world, maybe you should ask the faculty member that advised the student organization you started.   Or if you still can contact someone you worked with during a summer internship, you could ask them.

Who Not to Ask

If you were working at McDonald’s to support you through college, it is not a good idea to get the night manager to write you a letter.  And obviously friends and family members will be considered biased.  Just don’t even think about having them send a letter.

So don’t wait to the last minute to decide who you want to ask for a letter of recommendation.  Think about it way before you start applying for grad school or jobs.  Just thinking about this post for 30 minutes will really ease the pain of getting those letters of recommendations.  It’s amazing what a few moments of thought can do.