My daughter is a senior who did internship last year and it went well. She sent an email to her internship employer requesting a recommendation letter and part of what the employer replied was this.
“Good to hear from you. I am happy to be a reference. For a letter, you would need to draft something. Let’s plan on speaking about this next week. Let me know a good time for us to talk.”
My daughter is wondering what the "draft something’ means. I never did an internship myself so I can only think she (the employer) wants my daughter to effectively draft the bones of the recommendation letter and she will edit and sign it.
My daughter has some self image issues and so she doesn’t want to call her and ask her what she means re “draft something” and seem ignorant. What is she probably telling my daughter to do? Are there example sof a recommendation letter format online I can give her?
You could have her ask if the supervisor would like a draft prepared for the meeting next week or could they discuss it at the meeting. Reading the email you quoted it could be that the supervisor wants to discuss the draft and recommendation at the next meeting and your daughter doesn’t need to have one prepared.
I think she’s either looking for a formal letter of request, or more likely, is looking for the daughter to write her own recommendation and have the supervisor sign it.
I don’t think it would hurt to have a draft ready for the meeting. If the supervisor wants it, fine - he/she can edit and sign it. If not, start over in the meeting.
When I ask people to make the first cut at a reference letter, I expect them to include the basics, such as dates of employment and scope of what they worked on. I can finish it up
To whom it may concern
I have had the pleasure of supervising missy sue over the past 8 months during her internship with our organization. She was responsible for [this and that], and and also [did a bit of something else ]
Missy was a pleasure to work with. She is smart, hard working, and showed both initiative and genuine interest in our work. Her major project [drafting new water regulations] was particularly well written and useful.
“Draft something” means to put together a draft letter so her supervisor doesn’t have to concoct anything from scratch. It should be written well enough so that little editing is required.
What is the recommendation letter for? Knowing who the audience is should give your daughter some idea of what attributes to highlight.
I think the supervisor is offering the opportunity for her to create a list of strengths & accomplishments, which is a good training for job seeking going forward.
She’s a GIS major and assisted a municipal economic development office with communicating with “stakeholders” and putting together various planning studies, reports and related admin duties.
Yes, the employer is asking for your daughter to do the work of writing the letter herself. The employer is saying “sure, I will recommend you … but I don’t really have the time to write a whole letter.” This is really typical and does not indicate that the employer is blowing her off, or that if he really liked her, he would write the letter.
From your post it is unclear whether the employer wants to talk first and then have her write the letter, or if she should have the letter in advance for the employer to respond to. My advice would be for her to draft a basic letter and have it ready … when they talk, it will become apparent whether the employer expects to see it right then, and then your daughter will be prepared to hand it over on the spot … or, if the employer is framing the conversation more as “when you write the letter, be sure to include …” and then your daughter can nod and smile and go home and make some quick edits to reflect the conversation.
A typical letter of recommendation for a college internship might be three paragraphs:
Paragraph 1: general skills as they apply to the type of work done at the internship
Paragraph 2: more detail on a specific project or task that the intern was especially good at, highlighting very specific skills and how they applied to the work. If the reference is being used for a specific job (or grad school), focus on skills that the future employer (or grad school) will be looking for.
Paragraph 3: some general comments about more interpersonal skills – Intern is ethical, responsible, a hard worker. She will be an asset to her field.
Closing: happy to answer any questions, or provide more information about Intern, please contact me at XXX.
It would be a little crazy for your daughter to write “Intern was the best intern in the history of our company!” but it’s okay to really say good things.
This is indeed very common, although not so much in my field in academia.
Your daughter should approach this in the same way she does her resume. It’s her time to shine and to highlight her accomplishments. Blowing one’s own horn is called for.
Yes, this is definitely a request for your daughter to write a draft letter of recommendation for herself. While this might feel a little awkward, it’s a really good idea - the supervisor probably doesn’t remember the specifics of what your daughter did, or exactly who she worked with, and so this serves as a reminder for the supervisor and a framework he can edit.
Your daughter’s draft should not focus on emotional aspects, which should come from the supervisor (i.e. I very much enjoyed working with daughter). Instead, she should write up her roles and accomplishments: Daughter worked at Corp for 4 months as a trainee widgetmaker. She completed her training and achieved proficiency in better than expected time. Once proficient, she took on the additional tasks of garbling, adcording, and thyming, and trained new incoming widgetmakers.
I would not do this. There’s every chance the employer will literally just sign and send whatever the daughter hands him.
I don’t know about a rec letter for a job, but for schools, I always organize my rec letters by trait, like “hard-working, efficient, pleasant” and then support each point with anecdotes and evidence. But I don’t know if that’s what employers want.
This is fairly common.
For her boss, writing a letter means he has to invest time and energy,(–maybe a half hour or more of his day; he has to try to remember what she did, and then do a little fact checking to make sure he doesn’t write something inappropriate. )
All this for an intern who he doesn’t care about, is not on payroll, has already been dumped aside, and will be replaced next semester by the next [del]slave[/del] intern.
He may not even have paid much attention to her, like all the other interns who have drifted through his office , and all look alike to him.
So he’s doing her a favor by signing a letter of recommendation…but he doesn’t care enough to work on writing the letter himself.He’ll probably sign it without even reading all the details.
Use procrustus’s example in post 5, and fill it in with details like delphica suggests in post 9.
Sorry, I didn’t mean for her to literally include “widgetmaker” in the letter, but to replace with her actual skills and accomplishments. In other words, write the letter she would like to have signed.
Best are accomplishments which highlight soft skills - such as pulling together a team, or establishing a relationship. Soft skills by themselves are cheap.
I’ve never had to write a letter for my interns - because we hired all of them. But since a manager can expect a letter written by the intern to be positive, asking her to write her own is a stamp of approval.
I agree you don’t technically “attach” it, but you sure could send it along. I often see a cover letter, resume, and a couple of letters of recommendation as a package.