Serving as an Employment Reference
From time to time students ask me to serve as a reference with respect to a job they are applying for. For me to be effective I need:
...a sense of what you learned and accomplished while taking a class from me. If some time has elapsed since this happened, I may need to go over your grades and/or read code you wrote. If you don't wish to be represented by the one-person project(s) you worked on early in the semester, please suggest which part of your group work is the most "you"...hopefully there are clear boundaries which will let me observe you as opposed to your group.
...a sense of what the position you are seeking would entail. Would your primary responsibilities be requirements analysis, coding, team leadership, management, customer support, user studies, etc.? What size project would you be working on, in what size group? Which technologies would you be expected to know on Day One? Overall, what would you be doing in the first year, and how will the employer decide at the end of the year how happy they are with you?
...to expect contact. In general, if some random person calls me up and starts asking me questions about an ex-student, they're going to be disappointed. Assuming I have agreed to serve as a reference for you, it is to your advantage for me to know who will be contacting me (hiring manager, HR department, third-party contractor performing background checks), how, and roughly when. The best thing for you would probably be a call from a hiring manager at a time previously agreed upon via e-mail. HR people tend to expect that since they're in front of their phones all the time other people are too. But I am most frequently either not in my office or in my office but meeting with students, so pre-scheduling calls via e-mail saves everybody lots of time.
Please note that I am not qualified to serve as a reference for every student who took one class from me... it is possible to take (and even do well in) a class without having any shred of contact with the instructor. But many managers will want to hear qualitative ("fuzzy") things about you as a person and may find interaction with me frustrating if I can't talk about you in that way.
If you want me to serve as a reference, please send me a piece of mail briefly summarizing the answers to the questions above, as best as you can.
Letters of Recommendation
Please understand that writing a graduate school or fellowship recommendation letter is a substantial amount of effort (if done right, which I assume you'd be hoping for). It cannot be done well in a hurry. Also please understand that the most important ingredient of the process is for you to have previously made a particular sort of favorable impression on me. Merely getting an 'A' in a class I teach is not sufficient; in the other direction, people who have not received 'A' grades in my classes may well qualify. What matters most is whether you have made it clear to me that you have the qualities, interest, and drive to do well in a graduate program.
After we have met and discussed your aspirations, I will need the following information from you:
- transcript (an unofficial transcript is ok, but please avoid departmental or university-wide graduation-requirement audit forms, as they often omit key information--it's really helpful if you provide me with an actual transcript that says "transcript" at the top, etc.)
- personal statement which will accompany your application (solid draft or final version; text or PDF)
- for the schools you most wish to attend, the reasons why those schools in particular attract you (text is best; PDF is possible).
- list of organizations and deadlines, sorted by due date, specifying the due date type: online, postmarked-by, arriving-by. This list should be in the form of a "plain ASCII" text file. Here is a sample.
- for each organization:
- Name of graduate admissions committee (something like Graduate Admissions Committee, Ph.D. Program Committee, etc.)
- Affiliation (Department of X & Y, or Graduate Foo Program)
- U.S. mail address and FedEx address (which may be different)
- Phone number of graduate admissions contact person
- (or: URL of page containing all of the above--please check everything is there)
When filling out admissions paperwork (or web forms), you probably want to be careful to mark the checkbox which waives your rights under the "Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974" to access recommendation letters written for you. While the law mandates that most educational records must default to being accessible by students, long-standing tradition has it that recommendation letters are confidential so that writers may express their opinions completely.
If you are providing me with postage (not necessary in the case of a single letter, but polite if I will be mailing paper to a large number of places), please don't affix it to envelopes, as it may be wasted if I end up using an alternate delivery method such as FedEx.
Proficiency certification letters
If you took a class from me, and need written certification that you demonstrated proficiency with a particular skill set, I am generally willing to help. However, there are two issues you should consider before requesting a letter from me.
Please do not ask me to certify things which are untrue or which I do not have knowledge of. For example, if you took 15-410 from me, that does not provide me with any basis for certifying that you are proficient in C++, so please don't ask me to. If you took a class from me, I will not sign a letter claiming that I was your advisor or research supervisor.
Please do not ask me to sign letters which contain grammar or spelling errors
A particular "pet peeve" is being asked to sign inaccurate and incoherent skills-certification letters prepared by attorneys pursuant to employment-related immigration proceedings. While I am pleased to support your career progress and welcome your desire to contribute to the economic development of the United States, I am not willing to serve as a volunteer proofreader for a lawyer who is billing somebody (you or your employer) $200 to $400 per hour for work on your case. So please negotiate as necessary with the relevant parties so that the first version of any letter you ask me to sign is both factually accurate and mechanically correct.
