Writing an employer letter of recommendation for any past employee that you had experience working beside can seem to be a daunting task for anyone. The specific template type included can serve to provide some relief to any employer that is asked to recommend someone to a desired position or company. It can also shed some light on the overall simplified format that you should strive for when writing this letter.
True to its name, a general letter of recommendation is a document that one is asked to write out for another in a professional or scholarly proximity. It serves to validate what the inquiring employer or faculty has already gathered about the specific applicant from their resume and any interaction that has already taken place. This document is also a way for them to gain insight into the applicant’s personal habits or performance from a neutral observer.
Here’s a sample Letter of Recommendation template that can be easily customized and adapted to meet your requirements. It’s free to download and use.
What Should A Letter Of Recommendation Contain?
One of the most misunderstood notions about a letter of recommendation is that it should be long and elaborate to fully emphasize the recommendation being requested. This is not actually the case, as any recipient of this document would not want to engage in a five page essay just to clarify that a past employer vouches for the one they are considering. Letters of recommendation should be straight-forward and to the point, with a balance of professionalism and informality.
In order to create a highly effective letter of recommendation that serves its intended purpose, it is advised that you are knowledgeable of the reason behind being asked to write it to begin with. In an employer/employee situation, you would want them to inform you of the following:
- Contact details for the other employer that this letter is addressed to
- A current resume of the employee, in case it wasn’t a recent business affiliation
- A brief description of the position they are desiring at the company
- Any specifics that they would like you to include that are relevant to the position.
Having this understanding will help you to fixate on the traits and accomplishments of the person that pertain to the position desired in a better effort to make your recommendation relevant to the inquirer.
Once you are knowledgeable of this background and of the requisites necessary, these can be integrated with the three focal points of a letter of recommendation. The three main points of any letter are that of your relationship with the person in question, outlook and evaluations of their work, and why you believe that they are qualified for the desired position. Expanding on all of these primary areas will develop a perspective of the individual that the inquirer may not have the capacity to be aware of on their own.
Your Professional Relationship
While establishing these three central points within any letter of recommendation, it is essential to elaborate on the duration and nature of your relationship. Clarify whether they were your superior, subordinate, or in a completely different department that would collaborate with the department that you worked in. Given this proximity, in what position were you able to witness this individual’s work performance and skill set in use? All of these factors will help immensely to develop the background of your relationship with one another.
In regards to the evaluation of the applicant’s work, it is best to emphasize specific strengths and skills that directly relate to the position that they are applying for. Generalized traits can be mentioned as well, but the pertinent talents should be highlighted in an attempt to validate that this individual is suitable for the position. Any applicable successes that the company experienced during this relationship as a direct result of their performance should also be integrated into this to further reiterate the positive growth that was a product of this employer relationship.
Upon expanding on the nature of the relationship and the individual’s observable assets that they contributed to the company, both of these factors can then be assimilated into the conclusion of why this individual is qualified for the position. Use specific examples that emphasize the ways in which this employee differed from the rest, and what they offered to the company as a whole. By shedding light on the ways that this relationship enhanced the flow and success of the company and its members, it provides a lasting impression to the desired employer through an impartial observer.
Understanding the primary points of concern that should be included to serve this document’s purpose, all of this information can then be formatted to fit within the provided template type for a letter of recommendation. Utilizing this simplified employer letter of recommendation template in order to type out the document will ease the strain of writing too much, and drowning out the key areas that are the entire purpose of this letter. It will also provide an optimal example of how uncomplicated these documents actually are.
How To Use Our Letter Of Recommendation Template
Within this specific template type, all of the main points have been integrated into the format to ensure that they are touched upon by anyone using it as a foundation to write their own. Providing this format ensures that the writer can produce a letter that is both effective and informative in relation to the desired position at hand. With the aid of this general letter of recommendation template, the challenge of having to write out this document can be minimized and simplified to a context that eases the stress of ensuring it serves its intended purpose.
Although utilizing this template type tends to alleviate a lot of the strain of figuring out how to format the document, filling it out to make it personalized can make the process appear quite challenging. Obviously the template word document included is a vague outline of how the document should be set up, but the content in between the parentheses that you have to include will make all the difference in this template type being effective or not. This is where understanding the boundary that separates an excessive amount of information from too little will help, especially to establish a middle ground.
In conjunction with finding a middle ground of the perfect amount of content included within the employer letter of recommendation template, it is imperative to also establish a balance between professionalism and informality. Having a solely professional document from an employer can have a tendency of seeming drawn out or insincere. Having an overall informal recommendation can appear to lack any professional aptitude or validity. Achieving this balance between proficiency and casualness will make this recommendation appear genuine and sincere from the reader’s perspective.
In conclusion, utilizing this suggested letter of recommendation template provides a format that includes all the primary areas of concern necessary to expand on. It also offers an example of the overall tone and amount of content that is most effective for these types of documents. With the combination of both of these facets, it aids any employer required to submit this document to another, and serves the applicant in their endeavor of attaining this sought after position.