For almost any professional school, fellowship or job, an applicant will be asked to provide references. Choose the individual(s) that you are going to ask with some thought. There are things that you might overlook as obvious or irrelevant. Consider the following.
Look for experience in both the field of concern and in writing recommendation letters for applicants.
Look for authority. For instance, if you have a fellow in training versus a Nobel Prize recipient that are otherwise equal in consideration, choose the Nobel Prize recipient.
Know that your choice is respectful of you as an individual, your career choice and your choice of institution to which you are applying.
The individual should be knowledgeable of you, your talents, skills, character and any other trait that will indicate that they truly know you and are not using a boilerplate form for “just another” referral request.
When you approach the individual do not just ask for a recommendation. What you really want to know is whether or not the individual will give you a good recommendation. You do not want to find out, after the fact, that they gave you something less. I speak from experience that there are people that would do so and smile in your face and never let you know that they planned to trash you from the very beginning. Sure, they might still do that, but at least, you will have done due diligence to see that they are honest.
A few years ago, I was applying for a new job and asked a coworker to write a recommendation letter. I had worked with her for several years and thought she would write a good one. Traditionally, recommendations are kept private and the applicant is not allowed to know what is being said about them. In this situation, I found out that the recommendation was not a good one and was able to avoid using that individual in the future.
Despite the temptation, it is not appropriate to ask the person writing the recommendation to share it with you. They can if they want but you should not ask them to.
Be prepared for the individual to ask you to write your own recommendation. Be thoughtful and intellectually honest. Put your best assets out there and forget your worst. Or, at least, play them down to oblivion. If you are asked to write your own recommendation, ask for advice.
Basically, you will want your recommendation letter to communicate to the institution what your best traits are that make you more desirable to them than any other candidate. A recent online recommendation letter I filled out asked for ratings from Excellent to Poor in the following categories; Adaptability, Conflict Resolution, Empathy, Intellectual ability, Interpersonal Relations, Oral Communication, Reaction to criticism, Reliability, Self Awareness, Team Skills, Written Communication and Overall Evaluation. Almost without fail the submitter will be asked to and should fill out a written letter. This is in the form of prose as opposed to a table or graph. You don’t want to be too sterile, include traits on the human side of things, such as hobbies, family and other interests. You could (and should) prepare your own recommendation or a cheat sheet for whoever you plan to ask for a recommendation. A cheat sheet should include, at least, your name, what position you are applying for, how long you’ve known or worked with the person being asked, the circumstances of the acquaintance, all attributes that you feel you project into the relationship and some personality traits in case the recommendation writer doesn’t know any. Then, when the individual asks you to write your own recommendation, you could tell them that you have prepared one already and present it. If they don’t, you can tell them you have a demographic sheet for their use as background information.
From your Uncle Dave.