MBA Letters of Recommendation

Summary

In this podcast episode, Senior MBA Admissions Consultant Harold Simansky and mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald discuss the importance of recommendations in MBA applications. They highlight the common mistakes applicants make and provide tips on how to choose the right recommenders and prepare them effectively. Harold and Jeremy also emphasize the need for recommenders to provide specific examples and evidence of the applicant's accomplishments and unique qualities. 

Takeaways

• Recommendations are often overlooked but play a crucial role in MBA applications.
• Applicants should choose recommenders who know them well and can provide specific examples of their accomplishments and unique qualities.
• Recommenders should be coached and reminded of the applicant's major achievements.
• Having a member of the target school's community write a supplemental letter of support can be beneficial.
• mbaMission offers services to guide applicants through the entire application process.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the mbaMission podcast
• 1:00 Recommenders' Lack of Awareness/Writing Your Own Recommendation
• 4:55 Preparing Recommenders Effectively
• 7:36 The Power of Specific Examples in Recommendations
• 14:05 Choosing the Right Recommenders
• 18:30 Letters of Support
• 19:31 Highlighting Accomplishments and Unique Qualities
• 21:02 Who Will Root For You?
• 21:40 mbaMission Resources for Recommendations

Transcript

Hi, this is Harold Simansky, senior MBA admissions consultant here at mbaMission. And I'm here today on our podcast with the founder of the company, Jeremy Shinewald. Thanks for having me again. Of course. I know you're saying it's our podcast. I like to think it's your podcast. I appreciate it. I'll take that. You know, you've launched it and I really appreciate it. No, of course. And I think we're also going to have going in the future, we're going to have a number of my colleagues come on board to talk about all sorts of different things.

from resumes to short answers to essays to individual schools to interviews. But what we're going to hear to talk about today is really a place that I think people don't take as seriously as maybe they should in the effort that maybe they should. And that is about recommendations. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I would say if you were going to ask me what the most overlooked aspect of an application is, I would say it's resume, I would say it's recommendations. Because I think that...

A lot of people don't know how to manage that process. And they're fearful of saying to their boss, like, hey, can I give you some homework? Can I ask you to do something for me? And so it seems like an onerous process for the recommenders. And a lot of people just kind of say, hey, I awkwardly ask they can do it. So the process generally works like this. It's just like you log in.

You say, Harold is my recommender. You input his email. Harold gets the information, you know, and that's the last they talk to the recommender. And that's a problem. Yes. Because you can't just hope for the best. You need to make sure that you're at a minimum. If you have someone who does not write these recommendations on a regular basis, really understand the importance of them that you're coaching them through the process. So I know you have a lot of.

This is your podcast. I'm asking you a question. Right, right, of course. So I know you have a lot of clients where you talk to their, you ask to speak to the recommenders. I'll tell you what's really interesting is what has surprised me the most is sometimes how little recommenders know. And I mean that quite seriously, particularly if they haven't gone to business school, but even if they've gone to business school and that really is, okay, they don't know how important it is. They don't know exactly what to write and not in terms of content, but just sort of what are those things that are really meaningful?

What are those things that are going to move the needle? Right. And I will have conversations with recommenders. Right. And when I start off, it's reminding them how key they are to the process. At the end of the day, one could argue, and it will depend on the school, that maybe recommendations is the most important part of the application itself. Well, because it's the only objective. Like, it's the key objective information that they're going to get, right? Like, your essays are subjective. Your resume is subjective. Sure, yeah. I guess you're...

your GPA isn't someone's objective measure, but this is the chance for them to really get outside opinion. We're going to go all over the place here. That's fine. That's our style. But that's why I say to people, aside from the obvious ethical considerations, never write your own letter of recommendation. Even if your boss pushes back on you, say, please write this. I don't have time. You can write whatever you want. Don't do it not. I think, yes, there is an ethical problem with that for sure. But I think there's a practical problem, which is...

you don't have the level of awareness. You don't have objective awareness of yourself. So you can't write who your other people were in your job three, four, five years ago. You just don't know that. You might think yourself as an awesome team player, and your supervisor might think that you have a wonderful sense of humor that enables you to disarm others. They're just different things. And so you're robbing.

yourself of that opportunity to get that other really sincere information if you're writing yourself. The first thing is don't write it. And I would say when you talk to your recommender, understand that a lot of recommenders will say that to you thinking they're doing your favor and go in with a prepared mental script and say, I understand. I appreciate it. I truly appreciate that you want to give me that opportunity. But I know from speaking with the business consultant, whatever it is, I know from listening to this podcast. This is one thing that I specifically say to recommenders and I actually shade it just a little bit differently.

And that is we live in the world of chat GPT. We live in a world of plagiarism software. Frequently, someone will give me a recommendation that they're not telling me they wrote. And it takes me exactly 20 seconds to know that they wrote it. And you can, the admissions committee, this is what they do. They really have their attention to this notion of, yeah, good recommendation, but who wrote it? So do not write your own recommendation by no means. Yeah, it's a huge mistake. That's a fail. We've done a fail flaw. That's a fail flaw. That is a, it's a big, big mistake.

But I think then it's also second piece is prep your recommenders. And that doesn't mean there's a difference between writing your own recommendation and prepping your recommender. And prepping your recommender to me means you're reminding them of your major accomplishments. Because I manage a large team. And I can't remember what every single person did up top my head six months ago, a year ago. I would say to you, you know, I...

I hope you don't leave, but if you were to leave and say you want a recommendation, I would give it to you, don't leave. And I would say, yeah, let's review these. I want to make sure I don't miss anything. We got to review. We got to make sure that I know everything I want to say. That's right. Because honestly, it's more than people sometimes are going to ask this. You simply cannot have your recommender say, you're great. Yeah. Because - Gerald's super. He's wonderful. He's awesome. It doesn't mean anything. If however you said, hey, Jeremy is one of the -

best consultants I've ever worked with because there was a specific problem. I didn't know how to include the fact that, you know, my GPA freshman year was terrible. At the end of the day, you have to help recommend or understand what some of your successes were, how you differentiate yourself, and have your recommender get really specific about things you've done. And even some of your failures, right? Because virtually every program says, tell us about a piece of constructive feedback you gave your recommender. You give your…

the individual worked for you or the person you're writing on behalf of. And like, you can't say, you know, Harold's, I gave Harold constructive feedback that he was trying to, like those things are obviously at this point, like it's such a cliche. It's not, it's not helpful. There has to be something, ideally you've set them up with honest, critical feedback they've given you and you've shown that they gave it to you, that it was, it was not like damaging. It wasn't like Harold, you're being lazy. It was like, Harold, you know, I think that,

I think that you could be a stronger presence in our meetings. And I think that you're deferring to others and you've got some ideas that you're not putting forward. I know that you have this idea that you can share with me privately that you didn't put in that meeting. I want you to be a little bit more vocal. And then you can talk about how, you know, that at the other opportunities, hard as it was for you to speak in front of a green, to whatever it might be, to, you know, you learn to.

better advocate for ideas and have some success. This is like a microcosm of examples of like the idea is that like, look, we had a problem, I got feedback, I processed it and I improved and it had outcomes. And you have your recommender who can validate that improvement. One thing I will say is over the years I've worked with one particular private equity firm in Chicago, it is probably the firm that I've seen the best results. I had a couple of my guys over the last couple of years,

Wharton Stanford accepts, Harvard Wharton accepts, Stanford Harvard accepts. And I frequently thought to myself, why are these guys so successful? And part of it is they have a deep relationship with the recommenders and the recommender asks them to provide an entire diary of everything that they've done at that firm. Then the recommender goes through it and again, they are not writing the recommendation for themselves. They're simply saying, here has been my accomplishments over the last 10 years.

10 years. Well, the last two years, and at that point, the recommender will go through, hey, this one's really unique. I'm going to include that. This one's really great. I'm going to include that. Yeah. I think it doesn't have to be the most lengthy biography. I think you've got to have a plan. You've got to say, look, look, I think the short form is here are my major accomplishments. Here's some constructive feedback you gave me. Maybe it's a page of accomplishments. And

and I'm going to meet with you, I'm going to talk about it, we'll go for coffee, I'll talk to you about it, I'll refresh your memory. That's how I would say that those are the table stakes. And then I think also following up with these people and making sure they're getting it done because they're busy and they forget and you don't want them right in the day off. Right. And you want to be sensitive to their schedule too. Frequently I'll have a client of mine who says, hey, wait, should I ask the recommender to start my recommendation? And I say, whatever it is, it has to be before August. August is a month when people go on vacation. You have to be fair as well. A recommender is not going to do a

great recommendation if he has more foot out the door. Right. So the reality is, you should start thinking about your recommenders come May 1st. You should start having a soft conversation shortly after that. Yeah. To confirm they want to be your recommender. Yeah. To the extent you can, to the extent you're ready, I think that's true. And then, you know, we have for our own clients, you know, we do have like, you know, a whole recommendation process that we've developed where, you know, you can develop that, you know, that, that.

template for them and share. We ask almost like a questionnaire where you that that diarist goes where you fill out those accomplishments. But even if you're not working with us, it's still important. I think you prepare them with that. And then you revisit that process. And one thing I always say is give them a fake deadline. Like say, look, this is due August the 15th because they miss August the 15th and it's due September 3rd. That's okay. If you get them September 3rd and they miss it.

Yeah, the schools probably won't punish you if you're there a day or two later. Yeah, they give you a day later. 24 hours. Yeah. But like, you know, if your recommender misses it by 10 days, it's a problem for you and you could get bumped in the next round. That's not helpful. Absolutely. Listen, what's always in the admissions committee's mind is they're thinking to themselves, okay, what sort of effort has this recommender put forward? Because you are asking this, what person is really championing you?

And at the end of the day, if the recommendation itself is filled with cliches, could have been written about anybody that's never worked with, this is late, that has certain meaning to it. That's really important. Yeah, it's always going to punish you for your recommenders lazyness.

Listen, I think one thing that's important to keep in mind is just what the admissions committee is looking for. And candidly, they're looking for a champion. So if you have a recommender who submit a recommendation, it is a cliche that could sound like he's writing a recommendation about anybody.

If he submits it late, then I think at the end of the day, that in itself is a statement. And that's very important as you think about your entire candidacy sort of this holistic way where recommendations being a foundational piece of it.

They're not going to punish you for your recommender being late or for there being too many cliches in your letter, but it becomes a missed opportunity for you. It's kind of like, okay, so your recommendation wasn't impactful. The person didn't show that they cared. And on a relative basis, someone else has that recommender that really, really worked to differentiate it. I think one thing...

So I think I might have said at the beginning, but I think the key to a really strong letter of recommendation is no bluster, but saying like, you know, making a strong declarative statement is fine. Like, you know, Harold, you know, is, you know, one of the top investment bank analysts I've worked with and, you know, and here's why, but then the facts have to prove that, you know, like, for say,

If you're one of the top I've ever worked with, you've been promoted ahead of schedule. It gives you some evidence and then, okay, well, here's the evidence. Harold was promoted ahead of schedule. Usually we promote for two years. We actually promoted after one year. Then it's like, here's why we promoted after one. He had a preternatural ability to anticipate my needs as a managing director and was constantly coming to solve problems. There's a specific...

And then there's specific examples of that. So like you've got to get down to the evidence. And you're saying, well, how do I do that? Well, you've got to coach that person. Remember, I was thrown in, I had a schedule. And remember, you told me that because I kept coming with solutions that other people that you weren't accustomed to getting from other people. And listen, some different ways of recommender can really help you stand out is also talking about what you're doing beyond your professional responsibilities. What I mean by that is,

Listen, if you're a second year analyst and you're working in the corner on an Excel spreadsheet, that means one thing. If you're the second year analyst who is actually metrics on the first year analyst, who is the person who gets pizza on Friday nights, whatever it is that you're great community member, that's exactly what business schools are looking for in their class. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think, I think, I think you, your recommendation if written well, it doesn't need, again, they don't need to say that you're the single greatest thing in the world.

But what they need to be doing is highlighting ways that you've distinguished yourself. And that also doesn't, if you come from a, you're at a MBB where they send a lot of people, it doesn't mean that you have to be distinguished entirely from every single other analyst ever, every single consultant ever, but they need to help you carve out your own identity with your letter. And so they can say, hey, here are the things that.

this person did really well and differently than others. And this is why I have a lot of confidence that they'll keep doing that. Absolutely. Now, one thing that we almost jumped over is, okay, who should your recommenders be? Right. Frequently, one of the issues that we face or many people face is you cannot ask your direct manager to be your recommender because then you'll get fired. They don't know you're going to business school. So, you won't get your bonus. So, Jeremy, if someone comes to you and says, it's not clear to me who should my recommender be,

should be, how do you help them think through that? Yeah, I mean, I think your first option should be, in almost all cases, who I currently am looking for and is that person amenable to me leaving. So the schools will say, please do not ask anyone if you think it's going to compromise your ability to maintain your job, to get a bonus, to get a promotion in the future. They don't want a situation where you have a lot of risk.

If I tell them I'm going to business school, then they're not going to, if I don't get in next year, they won't give my promotion because they think I'm leaving. So you don't need to, you need to address that in your optional essay, but you don't need to ask someone at all costs. But I would say if you believe you're a recommender of the open -minded about it, then you want to ask your supervisor, generally you want to think about your supervisor first, potentially your past supervisor of that person that has worked with you in the last.

year or two. You know, after that, it really requires judgment how long you work for that person. If you worked for a person, you know, two and a half years ago, but you worked for that person for three years and you really grew, maybe that person can work. It's hard to be definitive in the, you know, but like everything is case specific. But like, even if you don't have that direct supervisor, or I would say also some people, maybe you have two supervisors, you know, you've worked for two, two...

division heads or something, but that's fine too. You can ask both as long as it's been different to say it on you. I think that's all part of the process as well as that you really have to go in there thinking that your recommenders, if there's two recommenders, they have to be two halves of a whole. They have to fit together really nicely and by all means worry that they're going to say the same things about you because the reality is it's a missed opportunity. Right. And then I would say, you know, if you don't have those people, like let's say you work for a family business, your company,

There are some companies out there that just will say, hey, if you leave, you never come back. So, if there's a lot of risk in asking someone or there just isn't, you're an entrepreneur and you're your own boss, whatever it might be, then there are always other people. Maybe I actually, we actually had someone on our internal Slack today say, I have a client who I'll disguise this a little bit, but is well, let's say is working for a family firm. It's just been working for a family firm for the last two years.

and who can they ask? The disguising isn't going, there's a layer of complexity there, but anyway. And I said, you know, well, can this person consider potentially, they were establishing a firm, so outside legal counsel, you know, someone who joined their board of advisors, a client. Yeah, even a customer sometimes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Jeremy, one thing that this begs the question of, okay,

I have a choice between having my manager write my recommendation or a vice president or managing director, whoever it is. And the reality is, how do you think about that? Do you go for the title? Do you go for the relationship? You've got to go for the individual who knows your work best, always. They want the information. They're not going to say, this is an amazing letter of recommendation. We've learned so much about this individual, but VP, forget it, we're going to throw this in the garbage. That letter of recommendation is great.

as long as it is illuminating who you are. And I would say, I would throw this back to you and say, you know, what about, should I go for school? Like if I can, if I'm applying to Columbia, do I need to have a Columbia MBA writing my letter of recommendation? Like what if I'm at a furnace? No MBAs. Right. I'm going to answer that in two different ways. Okay. The first, the first answer is again, go with the person who knows you best, who will be your Columbia. Whether they went to that particular school almost doesn't matter.

realities you want somebody who's really gonna paint you in best light. So that's one answer and the other answer is also think about what some schools will accept. You know what, it's schools like Columbia, it's schools like MIT, it's schools like Booth. It's as if you get an additional recommendation if you have a member of their community write a letter of support for you.

In fact, at the MBA admission website, mbamission .com, we have articles about this notion of having a letter of support written for you. Right, like a softer letter of support you're saying. So you have your, what do you think? You have your formal letters of support and then maybe you have someone who knows you extremely well, you know, who you work with who's now at Booth or, you know, theoretically was a mentor to you who is at Booth and now you're part of Booth. That person can write a supplemental letter of recommendation. That's right.

And that isn't saying like, I'm this is a professional recommendation. They're saying like, this is effectively a thoughtful character reference for a broader awareness of what this person has done in their professional career, their community career. But you know, I'm not there day to day offering you the feedback on their work or their performance. And they're going to be great member of the community that I know. Right. Right. I think that that's really it. So we talked about your recommender having to be your champion. We talked about your recommender really, if you have multiple recommenders, them saying,

different things about you, really looking at you also as a holistic person. Again, you're more than at your job, you're far more than the Excel spreadsheet or the PowerPoint you do. How are you in terms of relating to people? How are you as far as a teammate? How are you just as far as somebody they can trust? Are you the intellectual leader? Even though you may not have those hardline relationships with a lot of people, maybe you're a presence in the office.

Yeah, those values are highly valuable. I think people can fixate on like, I want them to say that I've got strong quantitative skills. If you're a math major who's at McKinsey, that just might be a waste of their words. Don't try and choreograph it too much. Here are my key experiences. It can be awesome if someone says, on this project that you take for granted that Jeremy...

performed exceptionally well with his analytical skills. But what I want to focus on is the fact that he related to a particularly prickly client in a way that others had trust, you know. That's right. And that's about it. Right. Or the flip side is also is I recognize that Jeremy was a poetry major at college. I recognize that after that he was a speechwriter. But you know what? When we have a quantitative problem to solve, we frequently turn to Jeremy. Right. Because he also has this quantitative. Right. Right. For sure. For sure.

Have we covered it all? I think so. And listen, I'll just say one thing. The best recommender is the best recommender. And what I really mean by that is reaching and finding that person who's really rooting for you and wants to be part of the process. It's like committed to you. Exactly. If you pick the Harvard MBA when you're part of Harvard and that person just is a bunch of rungs up, doesn't know you, it isn't committed to you, it's a waste of opportunity. Absolutely. So start off by thinking to yourself, okay,

who is really going to be in my corner? Who's really going to put themselves out? Who is going to write that truly powerful recommendation that really you need? Bottom line is we all need it. Yeah. And that's what gets you into the top schools. Yeah. What also gets you into the top schools is MBA mission. We're here. Well done. Great transition. What also gets you into the great schools is mbaMission.  Check us out at mbamission .com. We now have your offering called OnTrack.

We also have people who quote, look like me, looks like Jeremy, though I guess Jeremy and I look alike each other. But there's about 25 of us, and by all means, go on our website, sign up for a free consult. It's a free 30 minute consult, it is not there to stop you from anything. Yeah, we're there to offer you free advice to show you what we know we're doing. And you can schedule time. Harold, we all create availability every week. It's part of a service orientation of the firm. We help. We do.

tons of remote stations. We just need to sign up with us and tons who don't and that's totally fine. We're not the firm that's going to call you and say, you got to sign up with us. There's an exploding offer. My favorite one is, we have limited availability. That's supposed to try to play your perception of scarcity like they don't sign up now. The funny thing is we just enjoy it. We enjoy having these conversations. 30 minutes frequently is enough.

person who's asking for the consult, it's not enough for us. Right. We can obviously, the admissions process is just very big. There's a lot of complexity to it. So through a 30 -minute consult, we can at least get you started thinking about how you want to navigate it. And of course, if you want to continue on with us, our services include the start to finish package where we, like me, Jeremy, another member of our crew here, will take you by the hand, take you through this process. Coach, guide, mentor you through the entire thing. Every day.

every aspect. It's crazy sometimes how long we work with you. Yes, yes, yes. Like someone can sign up on January 1st of a year and they can work through and they'll get into one school after the September deadlines. They'll get into that school in December and they'll be on the waitlist for another and they'll go through a waitlist process that stretches into the following June and we're still with them. Absolutely. Because we are

It's a plus on that one. Yeah. Listen. We're there with everything. Complete start to finish means complete start to finish. Absolutely. Listen, we're invested in you. We're invested in the outcome. And again, you can probably tell we love what we do and by all means, sign up, start with a free 30 -minute consult and we'll take it from there. Absolutely. Great work. Okay. Great, great podcast. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. My pleasure. And again, it's Harold Simansky, Senior Admissions Consultant here at MBA Mission with founder of the company, Jeremy Schanwald. Thanks so much for joining us and for watching. Of course.

Thank you very much for listening to that.