This sample recommendation letter will answer the question - What areas can the applicant improve and what has he or she done to address these issues? or What would you say are the applicant's key weaknesses or areas for improvement?

Recommender’s perspective on applicant's weakness can make or break your chances of getting into a business school. In both your essays and your recommendation letter, avoid weaknesses that show lack of

1) Leadership/Initiative
2) Communication
3) Maturity

There are two types of weaknesses that you can mention:

1) Functional Weaknesses

Mention skills, that will improve with experience or which you will attain by the end of the course as weaknesses

For example:

I believe he has scope to improve in experiences like creating proposals, making sales pitches and understanding the intricacies of management consulting, which I am sure, he will pick up during his MBA program at X business school.

2) Personal Weaknesses

One popular weakness is lack of prioritization. This is a common weakness especially when a person gets into his first job after college. So this is a real weakness, not the “I work too hard or I am a perfectionist weakness”. Your recommender can write about how he has helped you to develop an prioritization process.  So prioritization in creating tasks and in managing time are two weaknesses that would look genuine.

Ideally, include the combination of functional and personal weaknesses.

Always conclude the weakness question with a positive action or plan of action that an applicant has taken. This shows maturity in handling weaknesses.

For Example: I strongly believe that AJ’s keenness to learn and his ability to analyze his weaknesses objectively will drive him towards excellence. I remember one session where I was giving him feedback on the importance of prioritizing tasks. I gave him some useful productivity tools and processes to work with. The next day, I saw him creating his tasks with the new tool I had given to him. He was highly receptive to my advice. But he is not just a puppet when it comes to following advice; we had our difference of opinion on parts of our project implementation. What I like about AJ is the data that he collects to support his argument. Most of the time, the data speaks for itself and he had proven me wrong on many occasions with his keen eye for details.

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