WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER WRITE YOUR OWN LOR’S
If you do have the ideal Letters of Recommendation scenario, good for you, go run with it. But let's be realistic here for one-second, you might not have the ideal LOR scenario. Some bosses might not want you to provide them bullet points to work off of. Some bosses want to do as little work as possible. You might have to use your best judgement here.
However, you can’t write your own LOR's for so many reasons.
For one, it’s unethical. But even if you don’t care about that, you run the risk, of looking like a newb, as somebody who does not write a lot of recommendations. Secondly, you run the risk making your LOR's sound similar to each other. Especially if you have a two different recommendations from the same workplace. Thirdly, you run the risk of the LOR’s sounding very similar to your essays, depending on the questions.
According to Paul Lanzillotti, admissions expert and founder of Amerasia Consulting, when he worked in the UCLA Anderson admissions office, a lot of times he would see people who have written their own recommendations.
He states, “Through this job, I would see recommendations that have the exact same sentences as the other recommendation. I mean, word for word, paragraphs even, where the applicants recommenders cut and pasted. Also, I would see all these phrases that they used in their essays too.”
Paul continues, “But more than that, I would see things that just shouldn’t be in there. For example, 'What I love about little Johnny is that he really has a passion for animals. He helps the Fuzzy Pet Rescue Centre. Every weekend he hands out soup to cats and dogs.’ And it’s like OK… you’re not doing that at work, so why is your boss including this in your LOR? It sounds like you wrote it. And do you want to know why it sounds like you wrote it? Because you did write it, so don’t!”
Bottom line, it undermines your credibility.
Paul states further, “It sounds disingenuous and fake. You don’t think someone on an admissions committee, who has read thousands of recommendation letters for years, can spot this right away? You don’t think someone on the admissions committee, who is cynical in nature because of all the trash they’ve read in the past, can identify this? You’re lucky if all they do is roll their eyes. Bottom line is, it undermines your credibility. If they sense you wrote your own LOR, they are going to start questioning other things in your MBA application. That’s where you get put on the Waitlist instead of getting accepted right away, if you even make the Waitlist.”
Give your recommenders information that is distinctly different.
So, if you do give your bosses information, give them information that is distinctly different. If you work at the same place and both bosses are involved in all your projects, a lot of it will overlap. Try to emphasize different things, and don’t give them word for word the same bullet points. The reason being, that when it comes to the eleventh hour, and Paul states he’s seen this before, bosses will just cut and paste. They’ll change a few things here, take your bullet points and smash it all together, it looks ridiculous. What’s worse than your LOR looking like you wrote it, is when it looks like your boss doesn’t care about you.
Keep checking in with your recommenders every week.
Start getting this done earlier, and give your boss about a couple of months. They’re not going to need that much time, but keep checking in with them every week. Ask them if they need anything else. And when you come up with your cheat sheet with your projects and things you’ve delivered for your boss, sit down with them again. Go over it, and tell them exactly what they are expected to do. You don’t want them to open the document that you’ve sent over to them at the eleventh hour. This may seem obvious, but don’t forget to include the questions for every school.
Some schools have additional LOR questions.
Some schools have additional questions, for example Kellogg has a question about empathy, and NYU has something about your emotional quotient or emotional intelligence. Find those questions online and write them down word for word in your document. Give your boss one document they can open up so they can cut and paste the bullet points into each question for each school. And then they can work and rework on it that way. If you give them an example of how this strength is applicable to this school (say MIT) change the wording for your boss too. If they end up cutting and pasting what you wrote, they might cut MIT and paste it into Kellogg. Again, it’s going to look like your boss doesn’t care about you, no matter how good the rest of your MBA application is.
The enemy of authenticity, is perfection.
There is so much work that goes into these LOR’s and it might seem like overkill, but applicants get nervous. They want to make things perfect, but just remember this: The enemy of authenticity, is perfection. It doesn’t mean you can get away from forming complete sentences. However, if you are spending as much time on your LOR’s than you are spending on your essays, you’re doing it wrong. Even if you’re spending half the time you’re spending on your LOR’s than on your essays, you’re still doing it wrong — overkill. You’re still trying to push things too much and it will end up looking fake. In the end it will run against you and there is an inflection point here.
Keep your eyes out for the next blog posts later this week. What happens if your work doesn’t support you going off to business school?