Wednesday, February 27, 2008

9 Key Elements of a Good Reference Letter

It's that time of year again when job search goes into high gear with millions of new college and high school graduates job hunting and pounding the pavements.

Job seekers might be looking to you for letters of recommendations and letters of reference.

To draft a good reference letter for a job seeker, use these nine tip

Read the complete article at BullsEyeResumes.com)

1. Stay positive, honest and personal.
2. Qualify yourself early in every reference letter you write.
3. State the nature of relationship you had with the job seeker.
4. State why the opportunity to support this job seeker excites you and state your feelings about being asked to write this reference letter.
5. Identify which 2 or 3 specific behaviors and qualities which, in your opinion, are most meaningful to the employer.
6. Why would the job seeker be a good fit for the organization in question? How could they bring value to the bottom line?
7. Write about your willingness to work with the job seeker again.
8. Share your availability for follow up.
9. When writing a reference letter, it is not the time to err on the side of brevity.

The overall goal is to be superfluous, long winded and relevant.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi this was a nice post. all the points if taken into notice can benefit the jobseeker in a way. but i didnt get what u wanted to say in your point# 2.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry that wasn't clear in #2 - Qualifying yourself means stating why you specifically are a good person to write the reference letter.

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