Career Diversity

When it comes to letters of recommendations, there are two criteria that application readers consider:

1. The CREDIBILITY of the recommender and
2. The recommender's ABILITY to speak to your ABILITY

A lot of people go for CREDIBILITY. If I can just get the CEO to write me a letter, I'll definitely get into to business school.

Wrong!

First, your letter of recommendation doesn't get you into business. But, it can keep you out if it's bad or from the wrong person.

Second, you want to try to combine CREDIBILITY with ABILITY.

One of my classmates worked closely (ABILITY) with President George Bush (CREDIBILITY) before going to Stanford and George Bush wrote his letter of recommendation.

Now imagine if another applicant to the same school got an identical letter of recommendation from President George Bush and the only thing that was different was the name. How would an admissions officer perceive that?

The both received letters of recommendation from a CREDIBLE source, however, since the letters were identical, that writer did not have the ABILITY to speak to each of their unique ABILITIES. If this scenario actually happened, both applicants would probably get denied because they chose CREDIBILITY over ABILITY.

When considering who you want to write your letters of recommendation:

1. Think about ABILITY first. Who can speak specifically to your unique ABILITIES.
2. Based on that list, who are the most CREDIBLE people in your eyes and why

At the end of the day, a letter of recommendation that can speak to your ABILITY from a less CREDIBLE person is more valuable than a letter of recommendation from a CREDIBLE person who can't speak to your unique ABILITY. A great letter of recommendation writer will have both.

Jullien Gordon
The Personal Development Guru
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