NTU (Nanyang) Letter of Recommendation Questions
- How long and in what capacity have you known the candidate? (No word limit)
- If this is a work-related reference, in what position is/was the candidate employed and for how long? (No word limit)
- What do you consider to be the candidate’s principal strengths/talents? (No word limit)
- What do you consider to be the candidate’s weaknesses or areas that need improvement? (No word limit)
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NTU (Nanyang) Letter of Recommendation from Past Clients-1
1) Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (Recommended word count: 50 words)
I have known John (name changed) for more than three years. I was the Senior Content Manager at Byju’s, and from 2019–2021, John reported directly to me and participated in various projects.
2) How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (Recommended word count: 500 words)
One of John’s standout qualities is his problem-solving and innovative thinking.
This was evident during a meeting where the team was tasked with designing a plan to meet a hard deadline of releasing 50 videos on our learning platform within the next two months. Our team was only staffed to produce 30 videos and we desperately needed a system to increase our throughput.
We started brainstorming ideas and tried to think of ways to speed up production without sacrificing quality. We wanted to come up with a solution and lay out a systematic execution plan.
John pitched a very different and out-of-the-box idea and grabbed a marker to explain it on the whiteboard. He listed all the tasks involved in creating a video. He identified the task that took the most time and devised a plan to parallelize it and use technology to complete it more efficiently. The plan was to convert existing questions stored in our database into PowerPoint templates in an automated manner and execute the task at scale and speed. Previously, all questions were manually typed on the PowerPoint templates which consumed 30% of the total time taken for a video, but using John’s idea, we developed a custom script (code) that reduced this time down to 5%.
The solution proved perfect—and everyone was convinced after he showed us a sample. At the end of our meeting, John created an estimated timeline for each part of the project and outlined how long it would take to complete each task.
His innovative and organized approach helped us develop a structured plan for achieving our deadline. I was very impressed by his ability to understand the problem, come up with a solution, and execute it. He played a key role in helping the project finish on schedule.
John has always been a key member of the team, and for the two years he reported to me, I rated his projects and deliverables within the top 5% of the organization, which helped him earn two back-to-back promotions.
3) Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response.
In terms of constructive feedback, one thing that I have advised John on is the fact that he takes on too many tasks because he wants to quickly finish a task himself rather than delegating it. This caused delays at times because he became a bottleneck when his workload changed during the course of completing an assignment.
In one particular instance, he was managing a team of people to upload content on the student’s learning portal as well as doing content review for weekly tests. He felt confident about his ability to handle both roles and told me so. I was a little concerned about his ability to handle both tasks, but he seemed so confident that I decided not to worry. He was able to complete both tasks on time for two weeks in a row. However, in the third week, he needed to do overtime and missed his deadline for content upload in the fourth week. He obviously had been overworked and was heading toward burnout!
I immediately called him up to discuss the situation and understand it better. I explained his mistake and advised offloading some of his work onto someone else. He took my advice, worked out a solution for himself, and figured out how best to get everything done on time without overworking anyone else on the team.
Following that experience, John became highly organized in managing his workload. He also began training other team members and delegating responsibilities as needed.
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NTU (Nanyang) Letter of Recommendation Example from Past Clients- 2
1. Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if possible, the role of the applicant.
I am a Senior Team Lead at Infosys Ltd. I have been working with James (name changed) since October 2021. I am currently his direct supervisor. James joined our ongoing project for the client TSB (Trustee Savings Bank), where our objective is to migrate analytics reports from MicroStrategy to Power BI. With over six years of experience in various Business Intelligence technologies, James was the ideal candidate for this role. His background includes handling similar large-scale migration projects, notably for HSBC (UK), which gave him valuable insights into the requirements and nuances of the banking industry.
In this project, James plays a critical role in designing and implementing reporting solutions using Power BI. He collaborates closely with both the development team and the client to gather business requirements, design data models, and deliver insightful and scalable analytics reports. His understanding of BI systems, combined with his experience in banking-related data structures, enables him to bridge the gap between technical execution and business needs efficiently.
2. How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles?
James has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities and technical acumen. One of his standout qualities is his ability to take initiative and solve complex challenges proactively. In our current project for TSB, he took the lead in requirement discussions with the client across multiple time zones and independently charted a roadmap for the migration process. He effectively identified potential roadblocks and engaged stakeholders early to mitigate risks.
A significant technical challenge emerged with the creation of dataflows—our data volume exceeded 100 million records, making it impossible to load everything into a single dataflow. James investigated the issue, identified the high-volume columns, and smartly partitioned the data into two separate dataflows. This approach enabled us to load the data efficiently and proceed with the project, ultimately delivering high-value Power BI reports worth USD 375K. His work on this directly prevented the potential failure of the project.
As a Team Lead, James not only delivered on his own responsibilities but also empowered his team. He conducted training sessions to upskill team members in Power BI and SQL, established best practices, and provided constant support to junior members. He was instrumental in data warehousing and modeling efforts in collaboration with senior architects, significantly improving the overall efficiency of our team.
In client interactions, James showed flexibility and ownership, often stepping in during the absence of senior members. His communication skills and ability to understand evolving client needs were key in adapting to frequent report changes under tight deadlines. Each time, he ensured the deliverables met or exceeded expectations, often ahead of schedule. Compared to peers, his combination of leadership, technical expertise, and client handling places him among the top performers I’ve worked with.
3. Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response.
An important area for James’s growth has been in deepening his understanding of business workflows. While he has a strong technical background, there were moments when his limited exposure to business operations impacted the project. In one instance, he missed some feature requirements that needed to be transferred from one business division to another. This oversight stemmed from a lack of clarity about interdepartmental processes and required management intervention.
I had a direct one-on-one meeting with James to address this. I advised him to ask questions more freely, especially when there’s uncertainty about business rules or cross-functional dynamics. I emphasized that relying on senior team members or business analysts is a strength, not a weakness, especially when it comes to understanding organizational structures and client expectations.
Following our discussion, I observed a notable shift in his approach. James became more proactive in preparing for meetings, researching background information, and identifying potential blockers in advance. He began collaborating more frequently with members from other departments to understand how their processes fed into ours. As a result, he improved his ability to deliver holistic solutions aligned with broader business needs.
This experience not only strengthened James’s business awareness but also highlighted his openness to feedback and capacity for personal growth. He has since handled complex integration tasks more confidently and now plays a more strategic role in our client engagements. His willingness to learn and adapt has been commendable.
NTU (Nanyang) Letter of Recommendation Example from Past Clients- 3
1. 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?) (Recommended word count: 500 words)
During my time working with Aditya, I think what set Aditya apart was his willingness to seek challenging problems and commitment to delivering on them.
Mu Sigma had a dynamic environment where everyone’s workload was substantial. Despite that, Aditya had the habit of asking for the most logically intensive, or vague and muddy problems to solve.
While working for American Express GBT, our team of 10 had to automate 120 travel reports in a span of 8 weeks. The most complicated report required over 20 hours to generate manually and quite some time to understand. Aditya showed initiative and took it as a challenge to work on that report. He spent hours understanding every single requirement and instruction in its generation, wrote a code module of over 1000 lines, and reduced the report generation time to a few minutes via automation. He even included a few of his own metrics to make the process of deriving business insights effortless. The client was very impressed by Aditya’s efforts and said the job was done perfectly.
After that project, Aditya’s urge to seek new challenges made him move out of his comfort zone and he asked for a change from the Amex GBT engagement to a Campbell Soup pilot project. He wanted to work on something deadlines oriented as well as diversify his skill sets. The Campbell team had to design a pricing web tool, which would be employed company-wide, in a span of 3 months. I saw Aditya work with all his effort and energy, working late nights and on weekends. He drove high-level client meetings, delivering beyond expectations regularly. His efforts in the Campbell project were recognized by the senior leadership and the pilot was converted to a year-long project.
He is not only committed to projects at work, even outside of work I remember Aditya used to coach students in Mathematics on weekends. Even in the middle of the intensive Campbell project, Aditya would request a few hours off project work, on the weekends, travel to the other side of the city, and pursue his passion for teaching students.
Overall, I feel that he has all the necessary qualities to shine in an MBA program and his unwavering commitment will ensure that he thrives in a learning environment.
2. Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (Recommended word count: 500 words)
For a short period of time, Aditya was transitioning teams within American Express GBT projects and did not have a well-defined role or responsibility. He was contributing by taking up work from whichever team needed more hands. He realized that he could have played a more impactful role if he stitched his day to day tasks with the long term vision of the Mu Sigma – Amex engagement. With this thought, Aditya came to me for feedback and support.
I had a one on one meeting with Aditya and made him realize that he needs to be more cognizant of the big picture, identify business-level gaps for which he can take responsibility and then deliver despite not having his role defined by the senior leadership for the transition period. In order to progress in one’s career, sometimes just doing the job is not enough, one should introspect and determine how to expand their corporate impression.
Aditya took the feedback very seriously and his demeanor changed right after the meeting. He started sitting with one of my teams from that day onwards. He identified missing links in a chain of critical code modules and undertook their development himself, which had an immense business impact. The rest of the team also took positively to his involvement and he quickly adapted to the team’s requirements. Eventually, Aditya was handling client communications and became the acting lead. With his help, the project reached a point of stability where nobody was overworked and the client was satisfied.
The positive nudge I had given him at our one on one meeting pushed Aditya into a state of sustained personal growth, which I observed over the next 12 months. He had truly broadened his horizons. Aditya is in general open to critical feedback and actively seeks it for his own personal growth.
NTU (Nanyang) Letter of Recommendation Example from Past Clients- 4
1. 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?) (Recommended word count: 500 words)
Aditya is an individual who has the remarkable ability to take up larger responsibility at a very fast pace, with commendable pro-activeness to spearhead initiatives.
Back in 2018, when I first interacted with Aditya, I just knew him as the new Mathematics in-charge who had joined Neev. A few months into Aditya’s role at Neev, his manager was unable to connect with us due to health problems and Neev did not have any senior personnel to manage our engagement. This is when Aditya took charge and became the sole point of contact, ensuring that all operations between Tenpoint Academy and Neev were handled smoothly.
The entire cycle of generating the content, sending it to us, going back and forth in case of issues, and reaching out to students to ensure effective use of our platform was taken care of by him. I later found out that Aditya was the only management personnel who was handling all operations at Neev for a few months while his manager was seeking treatment for his health ailments.
It has been over a year working with Aditya now and I have only observed immense business growth at Neev. Student enrolment has vastly increased after Aditya joined, which positively impacted our firm, increasing our user count, and engagement revenue. He also requested us for help in marketing for Neev, leveraging our contacts and network to reach out to prospective students.
Being one of the points of contact for our engagement with Neev, he was quite enterprising in providing solutions to various problems such as the error proneness in generation of content that is shared between us. He would also provide invaluable feedback on how we could improve the quality of features on our platform.
Knowing him for nearly 2 years now, I believe he is an accountable young leader who takes initiative and stepped up to manage Neev at a critical time when his manager was dealing with health issues. That is why I believe has the capability to grow into a good manager and a leader one day
2. Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (Recommended word count: 500 words)
One of my initial interactions with Aditya was to train him to use our online testing platform so that he can employ it for the students at Neev. A month after the training, I asked if he was effectively using certain helpful performance analyses features that could pinpoint the weaknesses of his students. He replied in the negative. It appeared that he did not understand the complete value of our tool, at the time.
I emphasized to him the importance of such a critical feature and how his students were missing out on feedback generated on the online portal. The larger point communicated was how he should always be on the lookout for methods to uplift student performance. He took the feedback very seriously and revisited the features not used at the time.
He incorporated the feedback nicely and started using the feature regularly and then almost a year later, he came back and requested an in-depth custom analysis of each student’s performance that goes far beyond what was automatically provided. It was clear that he had been accommodating the online feedback in the knowledge transfer to his students and now he is ready to think further ahead to uplift student performance. Aditya also had a few suggestions as to how the above-mentioned tool could be enhanced. Despite the overhead of additional work for my firm, I was glad he had taken my criticism so constructively and was inspired by his commitment to his students.
Recently, I was informed by Aditya that he undertook the design and development process of his own analyses portal, customized to Neev’s requirements, for the tests conducted at their center. A project which is testimony to how well he responded to my feedback.
