10 Tips For Creating And Using Reference Letters When you are writing reference letters for former employees or others that you have worked with, it can be difficult to know exactly what to say. Obviously, if you are writing a reference letter to help someone get a job in this economy, you may worry about what to say.

	With the large number of people who are still unemployed, there are many free reference letter samples that can be found online. Selling Yourself And Using Specifics When you write your resume, you are selling yourself as a potential employee.  Similarly, when someone writes a reference letter for you, or you write a reference letter for someone else, the writer is selling your skills.  A reference letter should make you stand out from the crowd of other applicants.  With so many people who are unemployed, you should expect to compete with at least 20 or 30 people for each job application you submit.  You can offer to send your reference letters separately on request, or you can include your reference letters when you apply for the job.  Though this may mean making many copies of your references, the potential employer can see how former employers have viewed your work ethics and organizational skills. Whether you are writing a reference letter or a resume, you want to be sure that you use specifics.  Though it can be difficult to come up with specific examples, when you are vague, the reader may wonder what you really mean.  You may say, “Sarah is good with detail.”  However, that doesn’t mean as much as saying, “Sarah is detail oriented.  She reduced the number of errors in our system from over 100 errors a day to less than five.”  Similarly, if you are writing a resume, you should be sure to use detail when describing your job responsibilities.  However, when writing your resume, you will want to balance detailed descriptions with brevity to keep your resume from being too long.  Using a sample reference letter can help you be sure that you are including enough information. Tone Of Voice And Proofreading Reference Letters When you write a reference letter, you want to be sure that you use a professional tone of voice, even if you’re writing a reference letter for someone that you’ve known for over 20 years.  If you sound too casual, the reader may wonder if you are truly who you say you are.  Additionally, though a casual tone of voice is common in today’s workplace, it is not appropriate for business correspondence. Before you print out your reference letter to give to your employee, you will want to be sure to proofread the letter carefully.  Though many word processing programs will auto-correct any misspellings, there are cases where you may have typed something different than what you meant to type.  For example, you may have typed in “Daniel was the principle worker on a big project that was submitted to the Federal Government for regulatory approval.”  However in this case, you should have written, “Daniel was the principal worker on a big project that was submitted to the Federal Government for regulatory approval.”  Both sentences have words that are spelled correctly, but only one is correct grammatically. Job Titles And Descriptions In Reference Letters Whether writing a reference letter for an employee or former employee, there are several things that you will want to include.  You should state how you know the person you are writing about.  For example, you may say that you were John’s supervisor from April 2001 to July 2008 while you were both working for Company XYZ. You will want to include your current job title and company.  It is a good idea to include your telephone number in case the employer decides to call you for more information.  This information will give the potential employer a name, employer, and job title to refer to if they decide that they want to call you to verify that you actually wrote the reference letter. You will want to give the job title of the person you are writing the reference letter for.  This can help the potential employer match the job title and dates that you give with the job title and dates on the employee’s resume.  Though a potential employer would like to think that everyone is truthful on their resume, there have been many cases where a potential employee fudges the dates on their resume, or even gives erroneous information.  Although in some cases this can be an honest mistake, potential employers will want to be sure that they verify all the facts when considering whether someone will fit into their corporation. Character Reference Letters vs. Work Reference Letters When someone is trying to rent an apartment or a house, they may need a character reference letter instead of a work reference letter.  Writing a character reference letter is slightly more difficult.  Though you can describe concrete examples in work reference letters, character reference letters reflect someone’s personality.  When writing a character reference letter, you want to be sure that you know the person very well.  With character reference letters, writing honestly about the person can be the best way to handle such a letter.  Additionally, if you want to follow a sample, you can search for free reference letter samples.  A sample reference letter can save you time and effort.  However, you will want to be sure that you personalize the reference letter so it accurately describes the person you are writing for. Free Reference Letter Samples If you are stuck when writing your reference letter, you can do an online search for free reference letter samples.  Your search results will give you many reference letters you can copy and paste into a word processing program.  All you will need to do with these reference letters is personalize the information with your employee’s name, job title, and specifics in their job description or the specifics of the situation.

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