menu

UVM Career Center Blog

Posts

Letters of Recommendation

By career

Different post-graduate opportunities may require you to submit letters of recommendation – including graduate and professional schools and certain jobs or fellowships.

A strong letter of recommendation is often to result of good preparation by the student. Building meaningful relationships with faculty, advisors, and supervisors will ensure that you have connections with professionals who can speak to your strengths and experiences. Communicating with them early and often about your request for a letter of recommendation will ease the process for you and your letter writer.

Before Asking for a Letter of Recommendation

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS WITH FACULTY, SUPERVISORS & ADVISORS

The key to a great letter of recommendation is that the writer knows you well. The writer should be someone who has worked closely with you for at least a year’s time.  This fact alone shows that the process of receiving a letter of recommendation takes time. If you intend to apply to graduate or professional school, you should be thinking about who could be a great letter writer for you early in your academic career. The next time you take on a TA position, join a research team, or accept a new job on campus, consider who in those spaces could serve as a great recommender and take time to nurture those relationships.

Additional considerations:

1. Stay engaged and avoid “burning bridges” – Don’t slack off as an experience nears its end! Carry on throughout the entire job, internship, research experience, or volunteer project just as enthusiastically as the day you started.  You may not recall easing up towards the end, but your recommender most likely will.
2. Keep in touch – Your formal experience with this individual may end a long time before you will need a letter of recommendation, but that doesn’t mean the communication between the two of you has to. Connect with them on LinkedIn, or send them a friendly email checking in every few months. Ask if they want to catch up over coffee or lunch from time to time. A recommender will feel more equipped to write your letter if you kept the relationship going after the work ended, and may be more willing to invest the time it takes to write a great letter on your behalf.

 

REFLECTING ON THE SKILLS AND EXPERIENCES YOU WISH TO HIGHLIGHT IN YOUR APPLICATION

As you consider who to ask for a letter of recommendation, spend time reflecting on the skills and experiences that are most relevant to the opportunity you are applying to and who can speak to them most effectively. While a faculty member might be able to speak to your writing or research skills, your club advisor might know more about your leadership experiences. Double check requirements from the programs you are applying to about who can write a letter on your behalf; some may require a specific number of letters come from faculty members, depending on the nature of the program.

How to Ask for a Letter

You have done the hard work of building relationships across campus and you have determined who might be best to write on your behalf. Now, it’s time to ask them to write a letter of recommendation.

ASK EARLY

The earlier you ask your recommender to write you a letter, the better. The ideal time to ask is when you are certain that you will be applying for the opportunity that will require the letter. If you are sure, then there is no need to wait until the application opens up to ask. 

The next time you connect with your potential recommender, tell them that you are about to start an application and would like to know if they feel as though they could write a strong letter of recommendation on your behalf.

If the answer is yes: Hooray! Thank them for their generosity and tell them you will be in touch with more information regarding the process as soon as you have details on when and how to submit a letter.

If the answer is no: Don’t worry too much, you have plenty of time to ask someone else since you are starting the process early. Thank them for their consideration and move along to the next person on your list.

BE SPECIFIC

When you make the ask, be specific about what it is you are applying for and what you are asking of your recommender.

Provide any details you can about the program you are applying to, why you are interested in applying to this program, and why you believe this person would serve as a great recommender for you. If they accept, you should share a copy of your resume and the list of skills and experiences you want highlighted in the letter with your recommender. The more information they have about the program, your interest, and your experience, the better the letter will be.

SET A DEADLINE

Once your recommender confirms, arrange a deadline to have a completed letter by. You could use the actual deadline for the application, but that leaves very little breathing room. It is a good idea to let your recommender know when the actual deadline is and agree to set a “soft” deadline at least a week prior to the actual deadline.

After your outreach

You have confirmed who your writers are, shared helpful documents like your resume and a list of meaningful experiences you shared with the letter writer, and they have all of the information need to submit the letter on your behalf. However, your responsibilities aren’t over just yet!

FOLLOW UP BEFORE THE DEADLINE

Your recommenders want the absolute best for you, but they are also probably busy people with a lot of competing projects. As a common curtesy (and for your own peace of mind), you should follow up with your recommender at least one week before the deadline that you both agreed to. In your follow up message, politely remind them of the deadline and ask them if they have any last-minute questions about the process. You can also ask that they send you an email to confirm they submitted your letter, but know that it is not appropriate to ask to see a copy of the letter.

SEND A THANK YOU NOTE AND UPDATES

Once you have submitted your application materials and confirmed that the letter of recommendation has been submitted, think about how you are going to appreciate your recommenders. A strong letter of recommendation can take a lot of time to write, so make sure that you at least send a ‘thank you’ card or email to show how much you appreciate what your recommender has done for you.

Lastly, don’t keep your recommender in the dark! The reason why they agreed to write you a letter of recommendation in the first place is because they are just as invested in your success as you are. Share the great news once you receive your offer letter and use it as another opportunity to appreciate what your recommender has done for you. If things didn’t go as planned, let them know as well. It won’t be the happiest outreach you have ever done but, as goes the beauty of networking, you never know what opportunities your recommenders may have for you if your first plan falls through!

Interviews: Leaving Space for Stories

By career

Book open, displaying word storytelling

Congratulations, you’ve successfully submitted your application to a recent job posting and have been invited to interview! What can you do to prepare? Consider the power of stories when answering interview questions. Continue reading “Interviews: Leaving Space for Stories”

How to Share Your College Wins with Friends & Family

By career

Heading home for the break? This November we’re focusing on how to talk about all the cool stuff you’ve been up to in college—whether it’s classes, internships, or campus involvement.

  • Talk About What You’re Learning: Share the awesome things you’ve been doing in class, clubs, or internships. Make it relatable by connecting what you’re studying to everyday situations.
    • Starter: “In my [class/club/internship], I’ve been working on [describe a project or skill]. It’s been super interesting because it’s helping me understand [relate it to something familiar or useful].”
  • Celebrate Your Wins: Whether you’ve tackled tough projects, hit personal milestones, or nailed an internship, don’t forget to share your progress. Your friends and family want to cheer you on!
    • Starter: “Something I’m proud of this semester is [name an achievement]. It was a challenge, but I learned a lot about [what you gained] and pushed myself.”
  • Perfect Your ‘College Story’ Pitch: Just like in an interview, having a go-to way of talking about your college experience can help. Summarize your involvement in clubs, internships, or research to show how it’s setting you up for success.
    • Starter: “This year, I’ve been part of [describe an activity]. It’s been a great way to build skills like [name the skills], which I know will come in handy for [describe your future goals].”

“It’s never too late to follow a dream.”

By career

An interview with Jaz Routon, the Career Center’s 2024 Faculty Career Champion Award Recipient

Jaz Routon, PhD, a lecturer in Human Development and Family Services in the College of Education and Social Services, has been awarded the Career Center’s Career Champion Award for her outstanding dedication to supporting students in their career paths. In our interview, Routon shares their approach to empowering students and some of the best career advice they’ve been given in their career path. “Change is scary, even when you know you are making a good decision,” says Routon. “Do not let the fear of change stop you from making positive moves in your life.”

How does it feel to win the Career Champion Award?

I am honored to be selected for the Career Champion Award but could not have done this work alone. I must credit my teaching assistant, Arima Minard, many guest speakers, and our UVM and community partners who supervised our HDFS interns throughout this academic year.

What is your approach to supporting students in their career path?

My primary approach was demonstrating to the graduating seniors that their career trajectories did not need to be linear. I wanted to ease the stress and anxiety associated with graduating and figuring out the next steps. I invited helping professionals (such as counselors, mental health professionals, social workers, and clinical psychologists) to elaborate on their career paths and the twists and turns leading them to their current roles. I wanted the students to understand that what success looks like is diverse. I wanted the seniors to know there are no wrong turns because each step will give them experience and insight to inform and benefit their next step. It’s never too late to follow a dream.

What motivates you to go above and beyond to support a student’s career development?

In my first year leading the HDFS internship capstone course for our seniors, I realized that students were unsure what to do with Human Development and Family Science after graduation. Although the majors learn about numerous helping professions early in the program, they are not given explicit directions on exploring these options. I also remembered how hopeless I felt at the end of my undergraduate years and how much I could have benefited from this type of guidance. To help them better prepare, I asked what information the students wanted or needed, and I worked to meet those requests. We covered resume building, cover letters, recommendation letters, types of graduate degrees, job readiness, and career exploration, to name a few. I provided the students with various links for career and graduate school exploration. The students even learned about budgeting and received a crash course in Excel.

How do you foster a sense of confidence, courage, and curiosity in students regarding their career goals?

When the students first start at their internship sites, they think they know with certain which population they want to work with in the future and have a good idea of what they may want to do. However, the internship experience can sometimes change their perception altogether. For instance, I’ve had interns who thought they wanted to work with children only to find that they did not enjoy doing so or have the patience needed. Or, I’ve had an intern who was interested in working with the aging population but found they could not deal with the grief and loss when a client passes. When their original perception changes, the interns feel a sense of loss, confusion, and concern about what to do next – especially if they had spent their undergraduate years expecting to go into a specific helping field. However, I reiterate how critical it is to gain this insight and grow from it. I hope this has built courage and curiosity to keep seeking a path that feels right to them. I also teach the students to stand in their privileged social locations to push for change in the helping field. I think this has helped build confidence in their ability to make positive change and impact on individuals, families, and communities.

What’s the best career advice you were ever given?

That change is scary, even when you know you are making a good decision. Do not let the fear of change stop you from making positive moves in your life.

What’s the most important piece(s) of career advice you give to students?

To retrain your brain about “failure” because no matter what, you have gained experience that can serve you.

How can other staff support students in their career pursuits?

Making efforts to engage with campus and community partners deliberately and consciously in a way that does not only serve the University. As a land grant University, faculty and staff must be critical and consider how their teaching techniques and assignments can serve the community. Doing so builds trust and social capital that is highly integral to career development.

Interview with Chris Offensend ’10

By career

Chris Offensend graduated UVM in 2010 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He went on to pursue graduate studies in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech before launching his career at Boeing. Throughout these experiences, Chris paid attention to what he wanted. And that desire led him to business school and entrepreneurship. In this interview, Chris talks about his journey and the early indications he felt leading him to start his own business. He offers students a helpful framework for how to approach their internships, as well as the different stages of their career, thinking of each experience as an experiment to test a hypothesis.

Sam: Chris, could you tell me about your story and how your path set you up for a successful start-up?

Chris: My story is a winding one. I started out at as a mechanical engineer major at UVM. But even by my junior and senior year, I still lacked a clear sense of where I wanted to go. My classes were good, and I really enjoyed the advanced courses. That uncertainty led me to go to graduate school.

Graduate school helped me in a couple of ways. It involved a lot of system design, which would serve me later. It also helped me to land an internship in aerospace that led to my job at Boeing.

My work at Boeing put me in a context that I was not used to; I was involved in manufacturing, research, and development – subjects that my UVM courses only provided a generic understanding. But it did involve a great deal of problem solving, which I enjoyed.

I encountered a personal problem when the Boeing corporation made the decision to move away from Seattle. I was not willing to relocate. This challenge led me to think more broadly. As a result, I enrolled in a Startup Weekend program, where participants would quickly move from ideating, pitching, and then launching a project all in the course of a weekend. It led to a lot of failure, but the experience was highly formative.

As a result, I became more curious about starting my own venture and decided to enroll in business school. As I learned about business theory, I wondered about if I still had what it takes to launch a start up. When it came time to secure an internship, I ran the experiment by joining an early-generation startup. I learned a lot, but the whole time I was asking myself, ‘is this a fit for me?’ The whole internship experience was transformative. It taught me a lot about scale, and I was empowered after that to go back and revisit my vision.

Sam: What immediate experiences led you to the idea for your startup?

Chris: There are people who are shoe-horned into entrepreneurship. These are the people who solve a problem, whose idea itself holds tremendous value. The process then becomes a matter of commercializing that existing idea. For people like this, entrepreneurship is kind of forced on them. 

And then there are people like myself, who op in to become entrepreneurs. The reasons can be different, and for me it was a desire to be impactful, to address social concerns through a double bottom line. When entrepreneurship is your decision, then you have to decide what is the problem area that you want to tackle. The key is to find a problem that holds enough energy for you that it can sustain your efforts for five to ten years. 

I found that problem area with a former UVM roommate who was telling me about the problems local governments face in procurement. The problem is costly since it involves steep overhead that can overtax local municipalities. And through our startup, Qwally, we are able to help local governments address that procurement issue.

Sam: What is some advice that you would give to students who are now studying at UVM and may have entrepreneurship aspirations? 

Chris: I think internships are a big one. For me, this was a transformative experience. Every internship is like a career experiment. You get to run a test on a career hypothesis. Even if the internship is a bad fit, you can ask, why was this a bad experience? What went wrong? What did I learn – not just about an industry, but about yourself?

I remember one internship I had at UVM. It was not a good fit for me. It did not match my expectations. But I learned from that experience by asking myself: do I like this? Do I want to do this? The reaction is either hot or cold. In that case, it was cold, and I moved forward.

Sam: You had a couple of experiences in graduate school. Could you talk about the differences in those settings and how they shaped your journey?

Chris: It is important to understand that in graduate school you can’t always get what you want, but you do need to know what you are looking for. In my first setting, I gained a lot of exposure to a subject area that was a good fit. I even thought about a PhD for a minute; but that was another experiment that didn’t play out. The experiment as a whole did play out, though, because it increased my overall career options.

From there, I continued to follow my gut. This was certainly true by the time I went to business school. From the first setting to the second, I moved from a focus on one particular industry to a general, or broad range of possibilities. This range offered me more flexibility; it opened more options. It allowed me to diverge from my current trajectory. In business school, everyone was doing something totally different; and I suddenly became aware of options that I had never considered. It was really inspiring. Again, this allowed me to run lots of career experiments, helping me to refine what I wanted to do, so that I graduated feeling much more confident about where I wanted to go.

Sam: I can tell this was transformative. Could you tell me more about what you felt in that space?

Chris: It was definitely overwhelming at first, but then it was inspiring. I go back to the startup weekends. That experience was completely overwhelming. I left that not exactly feeling confident, but I knew I needed more experience. I think experiences of overwhelm can teach us about those gaps in knowledge or skills. It is an opportunity for us to develop ourselves. The startup weekends gave me a basic framework to work on those gaps, when I got to business school, it clicked and everything suddenly made sense. 

As an entrepreneur, you are going to experience overwhelm. There is always a gap between theory and practice. And the bridge between those two is curiosity. Entrepreneurs have to be inherently curious to succeed. It is my biggest driving force. That curiosity pushes me to keep seeking out new experiences. If I encounter something new, I can join in, learn from it, and test more hypotheses. It doesn’t hurt to have a good fall back. In business school, I thought, I can always pivot and take on a job. I knew lots of classmates whose experiments failed, and they took a job somewhere. But in either case, the day to day is the same: positioning yourself in a new place where you can learn and operate to position yourself for the next experiment. 

Skip to toolbar