should you have a bunch of people send the hiring manager unsolicited letters of praise for you?

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I just saw the below post on LinkedIn, and I thought I’d send it along and get your thoughts on this strategy. After years of reading your blog, it makes me cringe so much. (Why would you write someone a reference if you weren’t their manager? Why would you pester every person at every interview stage with this letter? What if it’s not helpful information for them? Etc.) But everyone in the comments was praising this, saying how it’s so actionable and helpful and “gold,” which I found perplexing. Curious to hear your take on these kinds of strategies, especially as these sort of “advice posts” become more common.

This is the post:

Just went through a RIF but weren’t impacted?

Are you saying, “let me know what I can do” to the people impacted?

Stop.

Here’s your play — the Reference in Advance play — or RIA, as the kids call it:

1. Write an email reference template for the person — helps if you were the direct manager or person that hired them — but doesn’t have to be.
2. Tell the person to send you the email addresses of the people of every interview they have.
3. Ask the person when the interview is and when they need it sent.
4. Then copy and paste your letter and send it to those people IN ADVANCE of the interview (makes people stand out immediately, nobody really does this before an interview).
5. You can send it more than once to a specific company as they move through the process by forwarding it to the new people, referencing that you sent it to the previous and wanted to share with them as well.

The results can be pretty astounding. And in total, it should take 15 minutes to write the letter and 30 seconds for each send.

Put your action where your (maybe empty but maybe you really mean it but don’t know what to do) words are.

And we were just saying that there are fewer gimmicks these days!

This is indeed a bad idea.

First, written references aren’t a thing in most fields (although there are some exceptions, like teaching and some parts of law). When most hiring managers are ready to talk to references, they want to ask about the things that matter most to them, and most will want to talk — so we can hear tone and hesitations and ask follow-up questions. Plus, no one puts critical info in reference letters, so they’re not terribly useful. (I also don’t see anything in this advice about making sure the letters are nuanced or speak to what the job the person is applying for requires, so they really won’t carry any weight.)

Second and more importantly, this behavior is way too salesy and annoying. It’s going to look like the candidate is the one organizing it, and it’s going to make them look pushy and out of touch with how hiring works. It will not make them stand out — or at least, it won’t make them stand out in a good way; it is likely to make them stand out in an annoying way. And then sending the letter over and over as the process moves on? It’ll just keep annoying people, and at some point when they realize they’re all getting the same letter, it’s going to feel really spammy.

Third, the hiring manager won’t know anything about who these letters are coming from. Are they all your friends? Family members? Is the candidate herself emailing the letters from a bunch of fake email accounts?

Someone actually did this to me years ago and it was concerning, not impressive.

To be clear, it’s different if the person contacting your interviewer knows them personally. If you hear that I’m interviewing Valentina Warbleworth who used to work for you and you email me to rave about how great she is, that’s something that will carry weight — because I know you, I know your judgment, and it’ll be clear that it was our existing relationship that moved you to do me the favor of giving me intel on a candidate. None of that is in effect with a bunch of unsolicited letters from strangers that will appear to be coordinated by the candidate herself.

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