Georgetown McDonough Letter of Recommendation Questions
- Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (50 words)
- How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (E.g. What are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (Up to 500 words)
- Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (Up to 500 words)
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Georgetown McDonough Letter of Recommendation Example – 1
1. Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (50 words)
I have worked with Omkar for the past 3 years at Marelli North America Inc. In my position as a Technical Specialist/Team Leader, I have had considerable interaction with Omkar Daud on new model development and cost reductions.
Omkar is responsible for the development of the Nissan Pathfinder/ Infiniti QX60 exhaust system as well as participating in cost reduction activities.
2. How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (E.g. what are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (500 words)
In the last 3 years, I have seen rapid growth in Omkar as an engineer at Marelli. He has shown excellent project management, communication skills, and analytical skills.
Project Management – For almost all the projects we have worked together, he has always developed detailed schedules for achieving program milestones and has done an outstanding job of keeping tasks on time in order to meet customer requirements. Due to his hard work and attention to detail, Marelli expects to have a successful vehicle launch of the Nissan Pathfinder/ Infiniti QX60 vehicles in the spring of 2021. Topping it off Omkar has also worked with the cross-functional team to validate and implement cost reduction ideas to improve the profit by 2% after business award.
Teamwork and Communication – Marelli has development sites in Japan, Korea and design teams in Mexico. I have seen Omkar perform exceptionally well when it comes to communicating with international teams. He recognizes the barrier and communication gaps that may exist because of different languages or culture and proactively puts in the extra commendable effort to keep it clear. During the development of the Nissan Pathfinder / Infiniti QX60, we experienced a test failure for a bracket very late in the program. His communication went through the translation of three languages English – Japanese – Korea. He took extra efforts to explain engineering information to our international teams in Japan and Korea so that translation was clear. Due to Omkar’s coordination, we were able to troubleshoot the issue before the deadline and we also saved $12k annually for the project.
Analytical skills and Root cause analysis – For a cost reduction project, we needed to generate more ideas while identifying the bottlenecks in the manufacturing process and come up with design solutions to resolve them. Omkar and I visited our plant in Tennessee and we focused our work on the lines that have the highest moving volumes. To study the lines Omkar actually started working on the lines for some time to understand the line process and issues faced by operators. He displayed excellent root cause analysis skills during the process study and idea generation. We came up with 12 different ideas to improve the design and additional ideas for equipment improvement to remove bottlenecks while reducing cost at the same time. This is where I was impressed by Omkar’s analytical skills.
3. Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (500 words)
Patient listening – Omkar has a strong personality and is very passionate about his work. When he joined the team, this came to the forefront especially during the weekly cross-functional team meetings for his Infiniti QX60 and Pathfinder projects. The team meetings he led were more confrontational and this seemed to make Omkar less approachable. After one such meeting, I discussed this issue with him. My advice to him was to slow down, understand the impact of the communication provided to him completely and be more patient while listening to others’ concerns. Such nature might lead to him missing out on opportunities, solution development for issues and makes him seem less approachable.
Omkar was very receptive to this feedback and I have seen significant improvement in this regard. The cross-functional team meetings have been very smooth and Omkar has shown a lot of patience when dealing with other cross-functional team members. Significant improvement could be seen especially when the work shifted to mostly online during Covid – 19. I observed that communication was more clearer and with more patience.
Business-friendly communication – Omkar is a good engineer, very diligent about his work and studies every step meticulously, so he has a lot of knowledge. When presenting his work to an executive management audience, he communicates well but his information is very technical to them. Sometimes the technical details are not relevant to the audience and the audience loses the attention. This makes him an inefficient communicator for his audience and he should learn to read his audience and adapt his messaging accordingly which I believe is important for him to develop as a leader.
This was very clear with the new adhesive project he worked on. For presenting the information to the Japan development team and the executive management Omkar made a presentation with a lot of details and put a lot of technical information on his slides. When reviewing the information, I helped him shorten his presentation slides and make them easy to understand for a non-engineering audience. He received the feedback very graciously and thanked me for pointing out the issue.
While there is still some room for improvement in these areas, I think and MBA would be a perfect place for him to brush upon his business-friendly communication skills.
McDonough Letter of Recommendation Example – 2
1. Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (Up to 50 words)
I have been working with Black and Veatch (BV) for six years now and I have known Snigdha for almost 3 years. I have worked closely with Snigdha guiding her on the technical aspects of projects she has worked on for the ITC team and have reviewed her work.
2. How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (E.g. What are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (Up to 500 words)
Snigdha has been one of the strongest two or three engineers I’ve worked with in the past few years. I believe the qualities which have helped Snigdha standout from her peers are commitment to her deliverables and ability to lead her team through difficult situations. One of the best examples where I was truly impressed by Snigdha’ s leadership and commitment to her client was the Spearville & Post Rock station project.
The project was due for delivery in May 2020 and Snigdha was leading a team of 5 engineers and CAD Technicians for this project. During design she identified that the project scope was incorrectly defined and there was a need to revamp a critical portion of the project that was missed out in the original project scoping documents we received form the client. Snigdha notified and explained this to the client and was able to successfully request additional funding for the extra scope. However, the client wanted to stick to the original project deadline and did not agree on pushing out the delivery date despite additional work required to be done on our end. Simultaneously in March 2020 our offices were closed due to COVID and we moved to a remote work from home set up.
Now we all had to adapt to a changing work environment while maintaining our quality of work and meeting project deadlines. In a normal office setup, our system design CAD technicians work with high specification machines capable of handling heavy 3D modelling work. But most of the technicians did not have high specification machines at home yet. Due to these logistical challenges, once remote work started, the project’s timeline and budget became an even bigger hurdle.
Snigdha worked extensively to set up collaboration documents and spent a lot of time shifting all design processes and review processes online. She worked from the Ann Arbor location but managed the project with tech teams from Ann Arbor, Texas, and Denver to make use of all time zones and keep the work rolling and get the project completed.
Due to her leadership and commitment to her deliverable, we managed to finish the project on time. The client was happy, and we even got an appreciation email from the client team and from our company’s management too.
Another example I would like to highlight about her commitment is when Snigdha answered the need for engineering support out in California during the California wildfires in 2019. At this time, she was in Ann Arbor. We needed someone to relocate to California for a short duration to manage projects that were being impacted due to the wildfires. Her willingness to go halfway across the country, says a lot about her stewardship, and I would say goes beyond what would be expected of her.
Snigdha also likes to volunteer and organize team events, participate in potlucks, engagement survey committees to organize tailgate lunch events, diversity events such as Diwali, Chinese New Year, participate in women’s career fair panels etc.
3. Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (Up to 500 words)
In the post project review, she was given the feedback to speak up and be assertive about her projects. After that one escalation, she genuinely started taking a stad for her findings and speaking up in team meetings. It was nice to see her take the feedback positively and implement it quickly and since then none of her projects has ever gone over budget.
t is a known fact now that if Snigdha is taking on an assignment, we are sure to know it will be done before time and well within the budget. She has done an exceptional job managing project budgets and schedules.
Overall, I believe, Snigdha is a talented and hardworking girl, highly capable of achieving great heights in her career. I feel her decision to pursue MBA at this point makes perfect sense as it will help her understand multi-dimensional facades of business.
4. Is there anything else we should know? (Optional)
I highly recommend Snigdha for McDonough’s MBA program. I have known Snigdha on both a professional and personal level ever since she joined our company. She is very sociable and loves to interact with everyone and make new friends. She has a very welcoming personality. It is nice to have someone in the team who is not only committed to delivering results but also equally committed to developing team bonding and emotional quotient. She is a quick learner, very enthusiastic and passionate about all her endeavors. When she informed me that this is the path she wants to take forward in life, it makes a lot of sense to me considering everything she wants to contribute and achieve. I have no doubts she will be an asset to the school.
I would like to use this opportunity to highlight the great reviews i have received about Snigdha’s work in XXX project from our client. I am attaching 2-3 screenshots of the positive feedback I have received from our clients on behalf of Snigdha.
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