Indiana Kelley Letter of Recommendation

Indiana Kelley Letter of Recommendation Example – 1

 

1. How well and in what capacity do you know the applicant?

I have known Armaan (Name Changed) for more than 3 years now. He joined my Sales and Marketing team in 2015 and since then we have worked closely on multiple projects. For last 1.5 years, Armaan (Name Changed) is directly reporting to me and I have supervised all the projects he worked upon and his performance appraisals since then.

2. Does the applicant have potential as a leader and a manager? What have you observed that leads you to think the applicant will be successful?

After working with Armaan (Name Changed) for 3 years, I definitely feel that Armaan (Name Changed) have great potential to be a leader and a manager. One instance where Armaan (Name Changed) showed exceptional leadership & managerial skills was while closing a $ 3 Million project in Saudi Arabia.

This project was one of the biggest and toughest project we have executed till date. The project required our company to supply the equipment and perform on-site construction activities including installation of the 127 Metric ton equipment. Our company had never performed any onsite work and had no local presence or vendors to partner with. We received severe resistance from our senior management to participate in the bidding process because of our company’s inexperience in site installation and location of the site in a ‘foreign’ country.

Identifying a ‘reliable’ construction partner was the key to overcome senior management reluctance. For this, rather than directly pursuing the time-consuming activity of searching & evaluating vendors, Armaan (Name Changed) invested in building a strong relationship with the end customer by providing extensive technical support during bidding phase and went above and beyond to develop a good working relationship. Armaan (Name Changed)’s effort helped us earn our customer’s trust and in the end the customer itself suggested us local reliable vendors to partner with.

Armaan (Name Changed) traveled to Saudi Arabia to evaluate & negotiate with the shortlisted vendors. After technically evaluation of the vendors, he deftly negotiated the entire partnership agreement which enabled us to optimize our price for the entire bid. The partnership helped us in eventually winning the contract from one of the largest Petrochemical companies in the world “SABIC”.

This breakthrough has opened up similar opportunities involving site installation across the saudi arabia for our company. The project showed that Armaan (Name Changed) could take initiative to resolve the problems and efficiently develop partnerships and teams to achieve the desired result. Due to these reasons, I feel that Armaan (Name Changed) has a great potential to become a successful leader and manager.

3. Are there areas where the applicant can improve his or her potential for graduate study and a managerial career? If so, what are those areas?

One important area where I believe Armaan (Name Changed) should improve is his negotiation skills.

Armaan (Name Changed) can get a bit conservative while closing large size deals. For instance, in one of the projects when we were bidding to a client in Qatar, our company was strongly placed to win the contract based on our exclusive technical expertise required for the project. Armaan (Name Changed) and his team also had an informal confirmation from one of our chinese partners involved in the project that the client was not considering any other competitor for the contract due to our technical expertise and the critical nature of the contract.

Despite knowing that there was very little competition and Armaan (Name Changed) went in with a very conservative bid. He became cautious while deciding the pricing strategy for the contract. He was reluctant to take risk of charging a premium for our expertise and improve the overall margin of the company primarily because he was very keen to bag the project very quickly. Although we eventually succeeded in bagging the project, I believe our team could have done a better and a lot of money was left on the table.

After the deal closure, I applauded Armaan (Name Changed)’s efforts to convince the client about our technical expertise and strength of his professional network get us the informal information from other partners. However, I told him that to succeed as a future business leader he needs to be confident in his abilities and not shy away from tough negotiation especially when you have the leverage. As a leader he should know when and where to command a premium not only for the expertise but to cover up for the projects where we margins were razer thin due to high competition.

I believe winning tough negotiation and not leaving money on the table is one of the most important skills of a good business manager and leader. Armaan (Name Changed) has worked upon this feedback very positively and in recent engagements, I have seen a marked change in his confidence and willingness to push harder in the negotiation but there is still a lot of room left to learn and improve.

Indiana Kelley Letter of Recommendation Example – 2

 

1. How well and in what capacity do you know the applicant?

I am the Director of Analytics at Flipkart leading the supply chain analytics division. At present, I am the direct manager of Riddhima (Name Changed).

She has been working in my team for the last 1.5 years and I have directly supervised her work on multiple projects.

2. Does the applicant have potential as a leader and a manager? What have you observed that leads you to think the applicant will be successful?

Yes, I completely believe Riddhima (Name Changed) has the potential to become a great leader and manager.

She is really good at taking ownership of her work in the project and lead by example. Last year, she drove a major product change which improved customer perception thereby increasing overall sales.

Her work was highly appreciated by management and I received an appreciation e-mail (Attached) from the CEO itself for her work.

3. Are there areas where the applicant can improve his or her potential for graduate study and a managerial career? If so, what are those areas?

I believe going forward in a management career, Riddhima (Name Changed) should focus on improving her negotiation skills. Negotiations are a critical part of supply chain management, and I have observed that during strong negotiations, she tends to let the other parties get away with a deal.

This was discussed in her feedback and she has taken it positively and has attended skill sessions to improve on it. Therefore, I would recommend her to focus on learning organization behavior and people skills during her graduate study.

Apart from the short information provided, I would like to mention some noteworthy attributes of Riddhima (Name Changed) that should be considered with her application,

• Last year, Riddhima (Name Changed) took the initiative and started the Learning and development division of the analytics team and is currently leading the effort. She recognized the need for cross-functional knowledge transfer and addressed the concern through the initiative. Over the span of 12 months, they have implemented various speaker sessions and analytics events helping the entire analytics team.
• Riddhima (Name Changed) is a sports enthusiast and is a very active person involving the team outside of work in various activities. she along with her fellow teammates, has won multiple athletic track events at the Flipkart sports meet for the past 2 years. She keeps the work environment light through these activities and motivates the team members to join her.