What to Tell Your Recommender: A Checklist for Stronger Recommendation Letters

Most recommendation letters are weak for a boring, fixable reason: the person asking for the letter gives their recommender almost nothing to work with. "Could you write me a letter for grad school? I'd really appreciate it." That's it. No details, no reminders, no material.

The recommender — a professor, a manager, a mentor — usually likes you and wants to help. But they're busy, they may not remember specifics from two years ago, and they're often writing for five other students or employees in the same week. Left with nothing, they default to generic praise: "hardworking," "reliable," "a pleasure to have in class." Admissions committees and hiring panels read hundreds of letters that all sound like that. Generic praise doesn't move a decision. Specific, concrete detail does.

The fix is simple: give your recommender a short, organized brief before they sit down to write. Not the letter itself — a set of facts and reminders they can pull from. Here's what that brief should contain.

1. The exact program, role, or opportunity Name it precisely: "Master's in Public Health at State University, application deadline November 15" or "Senior Analyst role at a mid-size logistics company." A letter that reads as generic and reusable is a red flag to reviewers; one that's clearly tailored to the specific opportunity reads as sincere.

2. What the letter needs to address, if specified Some programs give explicit criteria ("speak to the candidate's research potential and collaborative skills"). If you have that language, quote it directly for your recommender. It saves them from guessing what the reader wants, and it makes the letter map cleanly onto the evaluation criteria.

3. Your relationship and timeframe, spelled out This sounds obvious but gets skipped constantly. Remind them: "You supervised me from March 2024 to June 2025 as part of the data team" or "I was in your Organic Chemistry II course in spring 2023 and then your research lab for a year after." This context often appears verbatim in the opening paragraph of the letter, so handing it over pre-written saves real effort.

4. Two to four specific achievements, each with a concrete detail This is the part people skip, and it's the part that matters most. "I worked hard on the budget project" is forgettable. "I rebuilt the quarterly budget model, which cut our reconciliation time from three days to one, and I presented the results to the finance committee" is a sentence a recommender can lift almost directly into the letter. For each achievement, try to include: - A named project or task ("the Q3 inventory migration," not "a big project") - A number if you have one (time saved, scale, growth, error rate, team size) - Your specific role in it (did you lead it, propose it, execute it, fix it?)

If you don't have a hard number, a specific before/after description works almost as well: "Before I took over client onboarding, new clients took about two weeks to get set up. After I rebuilt the checklist, it took four days." Concrete beats vague even without a precise metric.

5. One or two personal qualities, each tied to a specific moment Don't just list adjectives — pair each one with a memory. Instead of "I'm a good collaborator," write: "During the lab equipment shortage in fall 2024, I reorganized the shared schedule so three research groups could keep running experiments without buying new equipment." That's a story a recommender can turn into a paragraph. An adjective alone gives them nothing to narrate.

6. Anything the recommender might not know If you've grown or changed since they knew you best — picked up a new skill, taken on more responsibility, published something, led a team for the first time — mention it. Recommenders often write from an outdated snapshot of you unless you update them.

7. The deadline and submission method Obvious, but worth stating plainly along with any portal link or submission instructions, so it doesn't get lost in a long email thread.

A short checklist to send your recommender

• [ ] Program/role name + deadline
• [ ] What the letter should address (if specified)
• [ ] Our relationship and exact timeframe
• [ ] 2-4 achievements, each with a project name + number or concrete detail
• [ ] 1-2 personal qualities, each tied to a specific moment
• [ ] Anything new since they last worked closely with you
• [ ] Submission method and link

Keep the whole document to half a page to one page. The goal isn't to write the letter for them — a recommender who feels handed a script to copy will (rightly) resist that, and some institutions ask recommenders to confirm they wrote the letter independently. The goal is to make remembering effortless, so their real opinion of you gets expressed through specific, vivid material instead of generic filler.

If you'd rather not build this brief from scratch under deadline pressure, that's exactly what a recommendation letter talking-points brief does: you provide your target program, your relationship to the recommender, and your achievements, and you get back a structured ~400-500 word document organized the way outlined above — ready to hand off. See the Recommendation Letter Talking-Points Brief on Lucid Desk.