Jennifer Hayes, Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Kellogg, recently provided good advice on selecting and guiding potential recommenders.

Selecting Potential Recommenders

• Consider the people in your professional life that are willing to invest the time to support you in the application process.
• Kellogg requires two recommendations and prefers a recommendation from your immediate supervisor, if possible.
• If a recommendation from your supervisor isn’t possible, provide an explanation in the Additional Information section of Part II of the application.
• Your second recommender should be someone that can evaluate your career, including your leadership and managerial potential and your career progression to date. This can be a previous supervisors or people that are above their immediate supervisor, but does not have to be.

Guiding Your Recommenders Through the Process

• Discuss your application to business school with colleagues and “prime” several of them to potentially support you.
• Never help write recommendation letters but …
• Sit down with each recommender to discuss why you are applying to school and remind them of the work you’ve done for/with them over the past few years.
• Register them as recommenders as soon as you start the application; don’t ask them to serve as a recommender two days before the recommendation is due!

Her complete post is available here.