How to phrase email for reference letters

August 21, 2019 7:56 AM

I am mid-late stage in a very technical job hunt, and I've been told that reference letters would speed things along, and are a thing I should ask for, but have not been given a timeline. Can I get some help writing the requests?

I am probably the only candidate for the job, and I've been told they want me, and that we'd like to move the process forward as soon as possible. It's a small shop, but everyone involved is very important and has very little time: both hiring manager and references.

My references in particular are well-practiced in giving letters for grad school (though they are not professors), but more typically when given advance warning. This is my first time using them; they have no prepared letters. They are great, and love me, but it feels a little inhumane to ask them to write something immediately with a false or no known deadline.

Originally, the hiring manager sent me an email asking to provide 2-3 "references or letters" to "help HR" speed things along. I sent out one request for a short letter to be sent to the hiring manager; they wanted to know if there was a deadline. There's not, technically, so I re-read the manager email and fixated on where it said he just needed references. I figured, HR would contact them and set the deadline, etc -- it would surely be torture to make the applicant whip his references to an unknown timeline.

I hastily sent clarifications to my other busy references simply confirming they were available for a reference. After confirming all 3, I sent their contact info to the manager, saying I could get formal letters if necessary [critical mistake #1: not inserting "especially if prompted with a timeline"]

I receive a reply that yes, "brief letters would be helpful as busy people can be difficult to contact"; I don't know if they have gone ahead and forwarded list to HR, or if they personally want to shepherd the letters, or what. Now I'm flustered.

Options:
1) Assume they've passed on the contact info, and HR will be handling it. Maybe the hiring manager's second email was out of an abundance of caution, but because my people are not tough to contact, just tough to get to write letters without a deadline [objectively true], it'll be fine. Maybe this is being respectful of my references, or maybe it's just me being immature.

2) I can write second-clarifications to my references, saying that, yes after all, we need actual text -- letters even, and I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. But if they could, please send a brief letter when you get a chance, maybe sometime before the end of the month. [For non-gradschool, it sounds like this sort of letter is rare, but that the minimum deadline should be 2 weeks]

3) Adjust my clarifications by importance. Have one of my more compliant references write something immediately in case it actually helps, give a full 2 week deadline to the chronic procrastinator (perhaps admitting, "if you could send something in the next two weeks, I think that would be helpful"? Seems a little disrespectful to make up a deadline though), and leave the super-important one as email-only until required.

4) Write a clarification email to hiring manager asking for information about a timeline so that I can be respectful of my references' other deadlines. I am struggling to avoid this, because hiring manager is most important of them all, and as I have learned, often tersely enigmatic.

It may just be that any old set of written references satisfies the hoops that HR desires -- not the glowing, elaborative prose that I could get (and that might be useful in the future!) from references given a reasonable timeline. In fact, I don't even know if I need real-stationary formal letters from references rather than hot-take emails. In that case, sure, I could ask for a paragraph from each asap, and having it in advance may save us two weeks of the process; maybe that's not the worst outcome. But it feels especially fraught when I've already just sent them a clarification to hook them, and now I've got to reel them in immediately.

Any thoughts on what emails I should send? I am leaning towards #3, but will probably spend all day working out a gameplan.

posted by gensubuser to Work & Money (2 answers total)

Best answer: "brief letters would be helpful as busy people can be difficult to contact"

If I received this message, I would take it to mean that the correct people have the contact info, and will try to use it, but that they also recognize that my references may not respond to cold calls, emails sent to them from an unknown-to-them organization might be sorted to spam, etc. So they are suggesting that if I could proactively ask my reference contacts to reach out to the potential employer, that will lessen the likelihood of that happening. Since they called it "brief," and are generally vague about what they want, I would take that to mean they don't need any particular format or medium; emails are fine, scanned letters are fine, whatever the references want to give are fine.

Take a breath, this is all very normal.

They didn't give a timeline because, like you, they don't have one beyond "We'd like this to happen sooner rather than later." Again, no stress required, this is all normal. They are not trying to torture you.

It is not disrespectful to propose a timeline in the absence of one determined by someone else. You are allowed to have your own expectations of the length of the hiring process. Two weeks for a brief letter is actually a lot of lead time; if you think someone will procrastinate, a longer deadline will exacerbate that problem, not help it.

Finally, for procrastinators and busy folks and all others, it's totally appropriate to offer to draft your own recommendation. They can revise it however much they like, but it gives them a starting point that is much easier to cross the finish line from than just a piece of blank paper and a pen, and it lets them know what aspects of yourself you believe being highlighted would further your chances of successfully getting the position.

Here's a skeleton of what I would write if I were in this situation:

"Dear [Reference],

Thank you so much for agreeing to be available for contact from [employer]. After speaking with them again, they have clarified that they would appreciate a brief written reference, though they may still also reach out to you to connect directly. If that is something you are able to provide, I would really appreciate it if you could write to [employer hiring manager email address or other contact info] by next Wednesday. If that timeline won't work for you, or if you don't think you will be able to write to them at all, that is no problem at all, and I appreciate all you've done for me. Please just let me know if that is the case, and I will plan accordingly.

If it would be helpful, I would also be more than happy to provide some possible text for you to adjust and send.

Thanks,
solotoro"
posted by solotoro at 9:38 AM on August 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks, I especially needed to hear:

1) That 1 week is not an unreasonable deadline
2) That I can have expectations for the length of the hiring process
3) That boss's email can be interpreted as partially a suggestion

I used your template to reach out to 2 of my 3 references. It felt like the 1 week deadline (that they had to agree to at the outset) spurred them into action, so you chose the right range there. Because they had only recently just agreed to be references and we both knew they generally wanted to help however possible, I left out the more obsequious sentences, although I still gave them an out for "inconvenience"

Another thing that helped was realizing that I had a 4th possible reference -- it's easier to phrase it as a hard deadline if you really can just walk away. I will probably still reach out to the 3rd, most busy, in case boss is somehow waiting for all 3 to arrive.
posted by gensubuser at 7:59 AM on August 26, 2019