Georgetown McDonough letter of recommendation

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.