“Are we beginning again to tell you how good we are? Some people need to bring letters of recommendation with them or ask you to write letters of recommendation for them. But the only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves!”

It’s hard to know how old the idea of a letter of recommendation is, but I suspect that it goes all the way back to the beginning of writing and when one person would move from one tribe to another and needed an introduction to be able to join and be accepted into another tribe or clan. We ask people to write us letters of recommendation so that we can have the back-up that we are are who we say we are and that we are able to accomplish what we say we can, or at least have history to be able to substantiate this. The best letters of recommendations are the ones that are from the most recent people with whom we have worked. These letters don’t get better with time, so if you haven’t updated your files lately, you should. Social media sites like LinkedIn and others also allow for us to collect recommendations and “endorsements”. These are good too, but the best is when we can get someone to take the extra time and effort to write something directly to the person who is evaluating and assessing us for the next role. This shows two things; 1)you are important enough to the reference for them to stop what they are doing to help, and 2) that you are this interested in the position to have the letter tailored and targeted. Both are good things and could be the difference between you and another candidate.

We actually are writing our recommendation letters for ourselves each and every day. If we think about it, there is no better recommendation than the lives that we lead, the examples that we set, and the role models that we are, or that we aren’t. This is what Paul was getting at in his own letter to the Church at Corinth. He was saying to the people that they need not send him letters of recommendation, all they have to do is to continue to be themselves and do the work that they were doing and that would speak for itself. This is so true. If we are doing the work that we are supposed to do and we are doing it well, then those actions will speak volumes louder than any words on paper. It doesn’t mean we won’t need that letter some day, but let’s think that we each and every day, like today, we are writing our own letter in real time!

Reference: 2 Corinthians 3:1-2 (New Living Testament)