How to Write a Letter of Recommendation (LOR)- Everything You Need to Know

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How to Write a Letter of Recommendation (LOR)- Everything You Need to Know

This guide covers all you need to know about what makes a strong recommendation letter and how to write one. A recommendation letter is prepared by someone who can recommend an individual’s professional or academic achievement, such as a past employer, professor, colleague, customer, or instructor.

Consider these letters to be symbols, meant to communicate an important person’s support in a candidate without forcing them to visit the hiring manager’s office and make their case in person.

A recommendation letter is often written to a hiring manager or admissions officer in order to enable an interview or introduction of the candidate. It plays a vital role in internships as well as in jobs.

A recommendation letter typically has five components: a Greeting, an Introduction, a Body, a Conclusion, and a Signature.

1. In the Greeting section, The letter should be addressed to the person to whom you are addressing it., so we could write dear admissions committee or dear admissions officer or to whom it may concern. Keep the greeting as formal as possible.

- Don’t use informal terms like hi or hello.
- Don’t even use terms like respected because this is something that we only use in India and you won’t even see it being used abroad, so using the word cleared as the greeting is the best way to move forward.

2. In the Introduction section, it should explain the relationship between you, the recommender, and the candidate and share with the admissions committee how long the individual has known the candidate.

For example-

- How many subjects did he/she teach him or which projects supervised.
- The individual can also share a brief introduction about himself, as well as the reason for writing the letter.
- If he’s a professor, he may start your letter by saying I’m Dr David Mark, assistant professor at IIT New Delhi.
- If the recommender is a company manager he could start with I’m Mr John, corporate sales head at Reliance Industries.

3. The Body of the letter should provide a summary of the candidate’s professional and personal credentials.

To begin: The recommender may discuss the prospect’s academic strength such as;

- Their knowledge level on the topic.
- The problem-solving abilities on a project they are working on.
- Their ability to work in a lab and even conduct research;
- Anything on which he has closely watched the candidate.

Next, the recommender should discuss the candidate’s soft skills, such as good communication skills observed during a presentation, teamwork skills, leadership skills, initiative-taking ability, and even confidence.

Whatever qualities he discusses here, make sure to back it up with an example because this makes the recommendations strong and unbelievable to the admissions committee, so write it in a concise and coherent manner.

4. Conclusion, in which you should summarise the candidate’s significant assets. If you know about the institution and program to which they are applying. you may also remark on how you think the applicant will be a good match for the program.

Finally, clarify clearly that you are recommending them to the program you could write “he/she” would be a fantastic addition to your program, and I wholeheartedly suggest him to you. This way, you may conclude your letter of reference on a positive note.

5. The recommender’s Signature should contain all of the recommender’s contact information in case the admissions committee needs to contact them, such as their complete name, designation, university or company name, and email or phone number.

Who should write LOR?

- Before asking for a letter of recommendation, provide a draft that includes the information you’ll need in your recommendation letter.
- It might be difficult to select the appropriate persons to write your letter of recommendation. It’s not as simple as generating a list of all your old professors, employers, and coworkers and selecting the ones that appear to be available.
- You must also ensure that the writer will take the assignment seriously and commit some time to the project. A sloppy or hurriedly prepared letter of recommendation is preferable to nothing at all.
- Aside from that, the writer should be someone who can directly testify to the quality of your work.

Here are some examples of how to write a LOR:

LOR is one of the most important components of the application process, and it may determine whether or not you are accepted into a university. In order to get into the preferred university, aspirant students need to make a concerted effort to obtain a strong recommendation.