A letter of recommendation is a piece written by someone who can recommend your work or academic performance to a college or an organization. It’s typically shown/sent to a hiring manager or an interviewer who is deciding whether to employ or admit an aspirant.

A few colleges and organizations insist on letters of recommendation for their admission/hiring procedures. However, it’s advisable to take letters of recommendation to interviews even if they have not insisted on one explicitly.

Letters of recommendation help the interviewers or the admission/hiring officers to know about you from the perspectives of people who have been with you and known you personally for long periods of time – people such as your bosses, colleagues, classmates, professors, friends, relatives, or even the councillors of your ward or a politician. It helps them to decide whether your admission into their college or their organization will be a fruitful one.

1. Focus on one or two areas only in a LOR – these areas must be related to how you are related to the LOR writer.
2. Make sure that there is a logical flow from the beginning to the end of the LOR and information is not scattered untidily.
3. Write in basic English without using flowery words and without making blatant spelling or grammatical mistakes.
4. You will be questioned about whatever is written in your LORs and its veracity will be verified – never write things that aren’t true or you cannot prove with documents.
5. Get help from mentors, who have years of experience in guiding students to write admission-winning LORs.