A Good Letter is Hard to Write
I’m a graduate of one of the toughest MBA programs to get into. It might still be the most selective program out there. Of course I didn’t know whether or not I’d get in when I applied. I just put together the best application I could.
In a sense, that application process started a long time before I even thought to try. My college grades were good because I liked my major, and I’d co-edited a book with a friend which was published by a prominent academic press. Even after I decided to give the application a shot, I knew that I didn’t really have a good shot unless my GMAT score was competitive. It was, so I finally got to work on preparing the application itself.
The essays are the essays. You work on them and eventually they become good enough. The hardest part, in my view, were the recommendation letters. (After I matriculated, the then-director of admissions confirmed the critical role that recs play. He told me that he could make his decisions on the recs alone. Wow!)
For my three recs, I asked my then-boss, the CEO of a major foodservice company, and a VP at the same who had become my friend and mentor. Both had attended another top MBA program on the opposite coast. I also asked a good friend from an organization I volunteered at, whom I knew well and who was a great writer. Both the VP and my non-profit friend were honored to be asked and anxious to do a good job. They showed me drafts along the way, and I was embarrassed to be described in such glowing terms.
My boss took a totally different tack. “You write it,” he said to me. “You’re my writer.”
Fast forward three years.
As I told this story to an audience of pre-admission hopefuls at an info-session, the moderator from the admissions office jumped in: “We discourage this!!” she fairly yelled. “You cannot write your own letter of recommendation!” Slightly stunned at being cut off mid-story, I paused as the moderator quickly called on someone else to speak.
She should have left me finish, though. Because the story wasn’t going where she thought it was heading.
My boss was right. I was his writer. That was why he had hired me. I drafted his portion of earnings calls, wrote company announcements, ghostwrote his polite correspondence, and on and on. One time I even wrote a draft of an email he sent to a former investor he was mad at for trying to get him fired years ago. (He sent it largely as I had written it, and the two ultimately had breakfast and mended fences.)
After seeing the drafts of the other recs though, I really struggled to produce one for my boss about me. I didn’t really know what to say. But as it, too, was a work assignment, I gave it my best shot and turned it in.
“This is bad,” I heard a few days later. “You don’t know you at all!” I laughed and made an awkward face. “I’m going to have to work on this tonight,” he said. I gave my boss a stricken look and apologized-thanked him.
The letter he wrote was, simply put, nothing like the one I had drafted him. My boss’s letter was long, thoughtful, and insightful - both into me, and into the world of business. It was a thorough and confident case for why the most selective MBA program in the world should admit me. I could not have possibly written it myself.
I think back to his rec letter tonight because while reading my boss’s memoirs, I learned what he was going through when he took the time to write my rec letter. The personal and professional pressures in his life, the numerous constituencies he was managing, all the while being a boss and mentor to a loyal and thoughtful, yet naïve 25-year-old me. I felt more than a little grateful, and certainly a bit guilty in hindsight, for not fully grasping these things that were happening around me.
Without drawing any highfalutin conclusions about what this anecdote suggests about his character or leadership or whatever, I just want to say: Thanks for caring. I really appreciate it.
