Simon Fraser Letter of Recommendation Questions: 2023-2024
- What is your relationship to the candidate? How long have you known the candidate
and in what capacity? - What are the applicant’s strengths? Consider their intellectual capacity, maturity and
judgement. - Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the
applicant. Please detail the circumstances, and the applicant’s response. - How does the applicant handle challenges, such as pressure to meet deadlines, stress
with a difficult goal, or conflict with colleagues? Please provide specific examples. - Is there anything else we should know? (Optional)
Simon Fraser Letter of Recommendation Example – 1
1)How long have you known the applicant and in what capacity?
I have known and worked with Ashish since 2017. I am the owner of saurabh clothing company and Just like ashish’s company we also manufacture jeans. We often work in partnership with Ashish’s company (Aman Apparels) to fulfill big client orders.
2)List 3-5 attributes or characteristics that best describe the candidate
Transparent
Hard working
Quick learner
Good decision maker
Innovative
3)Of the qualities listed above, in which areas has the applicant distinguished himself/herself most?
When Ashish joined the business under his father tutelage, Ashish was very enthusiastic and started a new trend in his company of going out to customers, that is a door to door service for customers to get jeans orders for his company.
People in our line of work or the people that I mostly do business with, don’t go door to door; they would rather sit in their offices or shops to get orders. After Covid the general wholesale jeans market was slow, there were fewer customers in markets due to covid. Going through these tough times, Ashish’s proactiveness to go out and seek business and revenue made him stand out from the competition and helped him secure business even in tough times.
Ashish started to take orders directly from the offices of his customers after the first lockdown ended. He also started marketing in a door to door service format to customers. In this door to door format, Ashish asked his customers about their requirements and according to their requirements, he took the orders directly from them based on word of mouth only. This is a risky way of taking orders and manufacturing jeans because if the customer from which Ashish had taken the order cancels their order the designs of jeans made by Ashish would be stuck in the inventory.
Through this door to door service, the business started growing nicely and he started bringing in more and more customers. This innovative and proactive approach really helped him grow his own business over the last few years and I admire him for this skill.
It’s been a pleasure working with Ashish over the last few years and his innovative ways to grow business and work in the business with radical transparency and honesty is amazing.
4)What would you consider the applicant’s primary area for improvement or growth?
Due to his honesty and willingness to do business on word of mouth contracts, I have seen ashish being taken advantage of a few times.
Once in 2018, there was a huge order of jeans which we were working together to complete for Ahsish’s customer. However, Ashish’s customer canceled their order and requested a new design. Due to this Ashish had to change the order design as well. But the order I was working on had already been manufactured and placed in my production unit.
To change the design now would require rework and extra funding to pay for the rework and labour charges. Since daily labor which works on jeans charges money even for a single stitch cannot be compensated for a companies loss.
However, when I asked Ashish for extra funding he told me the customer hasn’t paid anything extra. This is where I had to teach Ashish about the downsides of working on word of mouth contracts. I had to ask him to have the tough negotiation and secure extra funding. if not extra funding then at least agree to share losses with the customer.
The loss that happened due to a last-minute change in design request should have been borne by Ashish’s customer. But we had to agree to share it in a 40-60 ratio. I completed the order at that time even though it cost both me and Ashish 5% extra.
Through this situation, I explained to him that sometimes even people who are working for you can try to take advantage of you and you should be careful and get used to signing proper contracts. Mutual understanding and honesty help a lot but you need to be careful and not be taken advantage of.
5)How would you rate the applicant’s potential for becoming a successful business leader?
Seeing Ashish implementing new things in his company shows that he has good skills to be a business leader. I am sure an MBA from a reputable school like Rotman can further help him upskill himself both in terms of business knowledge and soft skills to grow his business internationally.
Simon Fraser 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. (Maximum word count: 50 words)
I was Shreyti’s immediate supervisor in her first role as an internal recruitment and redeployment analyst at Accenture. Though we have moved to different roles, we still continue to exchange ideas around different HR initiatives.
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)
Shreyti has been one of the most proactive individuals I’ve worked with so far. Since she was hired directly from campus, there was a lot to learn and she came up the curve very soon. Not only was she eager to understand the processes in-depth, she also sought out more responsibility to add value outside of her portfolio. She was an SME in managing the entire employee transfer process on her own and completing close to 250+ transfer cases while coordinating with different stakeholders from compliance, onboarding and downstream teams. Just after 3 months of being in the role, she even stepped-in to back-up a senior employee in her absence and seamlessly carried out her responsibilities.
One of her biggest strengths, though, is her willingness to take initiative. For instance, after understanding how different teams interact in carrying out a single transfer, she worked tirelessly to come up with solutions – like, auto-tagging internal applicants on the tool for easy flow of traffic, reducing bureaucratic dependency and redundant processes – to make the process easier and less transactional for everyone involved. She took ownership to get the leadership buy-in for implementing those solutions and to create a strong roll-out strategy and the revised process helped us in bringing down the overall lead time by 50% and we were able to take on more initiatives internally because of the extra bandwidth.
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)
In the initial months of her tenure with our team, like other fresh hires, she was also trying to prove her mettle. However, this often meant that she would try to manage and solve things on her own instead of seeking help. This sometimes led to delays and situations becoming critical. For instance, in one of her initial cross-entity transfer cases, she came across a hurdle when the individual failed to meet our eligibility criteria. Instead of seeking help from her superiors, she tried to solve the issues on her own without highlighting the risk. The case ended up escalating.
When I gave her this feedback, she put her side across calmly and sought to understand ways in which certain steps could have been managed differently.
Post that not only did she ensure that she kept her stakeholders informed in a timely manner about the progress of her deliverables, she even took ownership of scheduling bi-monthly governance calls with different stakeholder groups to ensure that risks were managed proactively and effectively. She did not just come with problems, she ensured that she also suggested probable solutions and then adjusted her approach after taking in other’s perspectives into account.
4)Is there anything else we should know?(Optional)
She received a lot of recognition for her contribution in the team, especially as a Talent Mobilizer. This recognition is given directly by the employees through a centralized survey. Shreyti’s ability to relate to people at a deeper makes her a valued member of any team.
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