Letters of recommendation: A question of value.

Abstract

Letters of recommendation on 40 candidates for admission to graduate school were examined as naturally occurring instances of person perception. This context permitted the examination of the influences of the perceiver and the perceived on the process of perception, where the purposes of the descriptions and the audience for whom they were intended were clear. The analysis focused on the levels of agreement found among descriptions organized to reveal the presence of discriminative, consensual, and differentiating patterns of perception. The results generally revealed a pattern of nondiscriminative, nonconsensual, and nondifferentiating descriptions. Internal analyses of a subsample of the letters suggested that this pattern probably did not arise as a result of differential acquaintance on the part of the writers. The discussion emphasizes the importance of focusing on the attribute-selection processes of the perceiver as a promising avenue of further investigation.Requests for reprints should be sent to James C. Baxter,

Cognitive processes in evaluating reference letters

“…Reference letters are used to provide qualitative information about external job applicants (Muchinsky, 1979) and significantly influence evaluators' assessments of job applicants (Levy-Leboyer, 1994). In spite of the wide use of reference letters in selection, some researchers question their use because they are biased, unreliable and poor predictors of job performance (Aamodt, Bryan, & Whitcomb, 1993;Baxter, Brock, Hill, & Rozelle, 1981). In spite of the wide use of reference letters in selection, some researchers question their use because they are biased, unreliable and poor predictors of job performance (Aamodt, Bryan, & Whitcomb, 1993;Baxter, Brock, Hill, & Rozelle, 1981).…”

“…Although reference letters could be considered biased, unreliable and poor predictors of job performance (Baxter, Brock, Hill, & Rozelle, 1981), they are still commonly used and have significant impact on personnel selection (Ryan et al, 1999). An important practical issue of any selection tool is the need to maximize validity and reliability.…”

Confidentiality and the Letter of Recommendation: A New Approach

“…1. Description of the Job Applied For Baxter, Brock, Hill, and Rozelle (1981) have shown that in the absence of specific knowledge about the job being applied for, the letter writer does a quick and superficial intuitive analysis of this job, leading him or her to include useless and even misleading information in the letter. Therefore, a description of the job applied for provided by the letter requester should serve to delimit the work situations to those having direct relevance to the future job.…”

Wie werden Berufsanfänger in der Chirurgie ausgewählt? Ergebnisse einer Umfrage unter deutschen Chefärzten*

“…Diese erweisen sich meist als weitgehend wertlos [10,12,32], denn sie sind, anders als Zeugnisse, aus Gefälligkeit erstellt und spiegeln nur selten eine objektive Beurteilung des Kandidaten wider. Das Risiko bei der Wahl eines Berufsanfängers ist allerdings gering, denn spätestens nach 18 Monaten kann man sich gegebenenfalls von dem ungeeigneten Mitarbeiter trennen oder, wenn er sich in der Zeit als AiP ± im Sinne einer verlängerten Probezeit ± als guter Mitar- Wohl häufig überschätzt werden von den Anwärtern Empfehlungsschreiben.…”