I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) Welcome to F1GMAT's #askAtulJose series. I am Atul Jose.
Today, I explain the 5 Rules to Manage your Supervisors for MBA Application Recommendation Letters.
This is a tricky topic to cover, and I don't think many of you fully understand the challenges you are likely to face when you request a recommendation letter. Over the past 10 years, I have seen so many interesting dynamics between supervisors and applicants from technology, military, investment banking, marketing, consulting, and engineering backgrounds. Each interaction I had as part of F1GMAT's Recommendation Letter Editing Service has given me insights into following certain best practices.
#1 Establish a Protocol for Communication
As in any professional setting, you are expected to write an email with a balanced tone and convey the requirement for the recommendation letter. You should bring the person to the center stage and, emphasize the value of the letter for admissions and reiterate how the essays and the letter must match.
Ideally, meet the person outside a professional context in a café or in a neutral venue. For conveying such an important message, a chat or email as the first communication might diminish the seriousness of your goal.
You might be comfortable with internal chat apps and voice messages. I recently got a request for an important tax document from a formal employee through chat. And I found it absurd that someone would request such an important document through chat. No matter how much we have evolved with communication, stick to email as your default communication tool.
Let us say you have relocated, or the supervisor is traveling, and email is the only option for the first interaction, write an email with the entire context – why an MBA, the importance of a recommendation letter, the value of the supervisor's voice in the letter and the necessary documents that would help them write the letter. In our case, we share the guideline document. Make it very clear – the expected deadline, the process, and whether they are open to consultants collaborating for the recommendation letters.
Once an email is sent, you either get a favorable, not a favorable, or silence as a response.
The silence could be a No, or the person is not comfortable continuing the communication through email, at least the initial communication, or they have some unresolved issues with you, or they might be too busy traveling or taking care of other priorities, especially if they are in a CXO role.
#2 Manage EGO clashes
Most supervisors will say Yes to your request, but when you start the process, they will quote a few roadblocks like rules of advising them. Some are open to working with consultants like me, but some might not be so open. I had this one case where a former Harvard MBA, who was the supervisor, said, I will listen to one iteration of your edit, but then I am not comfortable taking more edit advice. This was a fairly older gentleman. So I don't know if it was the age that played into that ego or was it about following rules as an entrepreneur or just the ego of listening to another person giving you advice on writing a recommendation letter when I am pretty certain the person had written many recommendation letters in his time. But it was an interesting experience where a person is trying hard, really hard, not to let his ego come in between what he could do for his employee.
In such cases, what we do at F1GMAT is offer a guideline document. So this way, the supervisor gets a document with a clear to-do list and traits that they need to highlight for each school. A few examples of the applicant's contributions to the project, to the team, and to the organization are also highlighted in the document. So any supervisor who shows hesitancy to collaborate with consultants or with an external editor, the guideline document that we provide at F1GMAT is an ideal deliverable for the supervisor.
Then there are those supervisors who are maybe just 2-3 years older than you. If they have an MBA and a realistic understanding of the value of the program, the EGO for such supervisors come if they are from a tier-2 school and the school you are targeting is an M7 school. Even within M7, there is a hierarchy. They know the exact value of their recommendation letter. It is to improve your odds for success at a rate much higher than what they are likely to achieve. This thought could lead to some friction. But if the supervisor is a balanced individual, you don't have to worry about the person turning hostile.
The biggest challenge, however, is for those supervisors who have no Master's or an MBA degree. They certainly know the career stagnation they are likely to face or are already facing it. For many, this EGO from insecurity is unlikely to happen, but I have seen it happen quite a few times with trivial excuses to stall the recommendation letter writing process. I have heard excuses like there is a protocol for receiving emails from external organizations (if the company is a Finance company, especially high-profile Investment Banks), many just submit the letter even after requesting not to submit without a discussion with the applicant or a consultant, and some might very subtly include weaknesses that could jeopardize the entire application. It just takes a line or two to contradict the entire narrative you might have built for the essay. So whatever be the circumstances, make sure that a consultant or an editor is reviewing or at least reading the letter before submitting it.
#3 Accept the Role Reversal
If you look at the entire recommendation letter writing process, you are supervising your supervisor. Obviously, not too aggressively, but eventually, you have to send follow-up emails, nudge them with tips, and perhaps even meet them to understand the challenges of completing the letter. So when the roles are reversed, a common mistake I see is the applicant hesitating to send follow-up emails, calls, or even messages, fearing that such follow-ups could annoy the supervisor. Many try to mimic the style of the supervisor. If the person had given you a lot of autonomy, you feel it is unfair to follow up. That is absolutely not the case. They are managing multiple tasks on a daily basis, and writing a recommendation letter is unlikely to be at the top of their agenda, no matter how great your dynamics are with the supervisor. Most supervisors will wait close to the deadline date before even writing the first draft. This means that the probability of an error or a weakness that jeopardizes your admissions creeping into the letter is high. So a rule of thumb is to follow up and ensure that at least the first draft is completed one week before the deadline.
And embrace the role reversal. But always maintain diplomacy when you communicate. Show respect. Reiterate the importance of the letter and persistently follow up until you get the deliverables for a consultant to review or you are certain that the points included in the guideline document that you prepared with the consultant are covered by the supervisor.
#4 Change Supervisor only when required
There is no one rule for assessing whether to ask another supervisor for a recommendation letter. The organizational hierarchy, your roles and responsibilities, your history with the supervisor, and the leadership style & culture in your organization quite often determine this decision.
In some organizations like the military or a startup, the officer or the founder might have made plans with a long-term perspective. Even the promotion might be an incentive for you to stick around. So when you share a plan that disrupts their talent strategy, they might react negatively. At least initially. Let the tension ease a bit. Then you approach the supervisor in a week. Just remember that they believed in you. That is the reason they made long-term strategic plans with you in mind, but because the initial reaction is that of a betrayal, you might feel that the supervisor might not write a letter. I have seen that, after the initial reaction, most supervisors are happy to write a recommendation letter capturing the unique strengths of the applicant.
I have also seen applicants overreacting with slight delays or a few roadblocks. Some supervisors are, in fact, passive-aggressive in the way they demonstrate their disinterest in supporting your career goals. So if you have followed our strategy to split Round 1 and Round 2 target schools, you might have already experienced the reality of working with a supervisor in Round 1. And when you are preparing for Round 2 by the end of November and the first two weeks of December, review that experience, and if you notice a lot of conflicts and unnecessary follow-ups, even to make them do the bare minimum, it is time to find another supervisor.
#5. Focus on the Narrative
It is very important that you reflect and understand what happened during your tenure with the supervisor. If in all the projects you had a visible contribution, then you don't have to worry about approaching the supervisor. But let's say one project didn't achieve the desired result one had anticipated, and another you did exceptionally well. Then you can strategically include the weakness narrative for the project that didn't do as well.
The weakness narrative or the feedback given by the supervisor, and the corrective steps you have taken question, require cooperation from the supervisor. They could very easily cite an example that touches on a lack of maturity or weakness in communication – both of which can jeopardize your admission chances. If you can't directly guide them, you can cite your consultant saying, "My consultant suggested that the weakness about my reaction is not appropriate for an MBA Application." This way, you have a scapegoat in us, the consultants, and your relationship with the supervisor is intact.
You must be very careful not to overdo the management of the weakness part. This is an area where the supervisor can get a little annoyed with you. They would feel that the integrity of the application process is violated when you suggest another weakness that is less detrimental to your admission chances. One way to neutralize this problem is to share an overview of the narrative that you have used for the essay. Not the actual essay. Only the overview. This is to avoid supervisors from borrowing phrases from your actual essay. That is a recipe for rejection when you have essays and letters with similar phrasing.
Let us say your emotional intelligence is a strength in the essay, but for the feedback question in the letter, the supervisor cites an example where you overreacted to a setback, or it affected your dynamics in the organization, then the entire narrative for the essay won't work. So you have to reiterate why such contradictions are harmful to your application.
For the strengths part of the letter, offering a bird's eye view and balancing metrics with narrative is important for an authentic letter. Even if the metrics are not often mentioned in the letter, the narrative is extremely important. Make sure that they don't write the letter as an essay with a lot of storytelling. That is a first tell that the letter has been written by the applicant or they have supervised the entire process.
Then there are some supervisors who will suggest that you write the letter, and they would just edit it and sign in. Try to get the first draft, but if they don't agree, to be honest, you can't do much about it if that is the only person who is likely to write the letter. In such cases, taking assistance from someone else who can write in an authoritative voice is one way to go. Don't write your own letters.
For Help with managing the entire MBA Application Recommendation Letters, Subscribe to F1GMAT's 1-School MBA Recommendation Letter Editing Service
If you need help just with one supervisor, subscribe to the One Supervisor Recommendation Letter Editing Service
