No One Takes a Reference Seriously Unless You List the Person’s Weaknesses

There’s almost no point when I’m writing a reference or recommendation for somewhen where I don’t list “highly recommend” for someone.

As someone who just turned 26 years old a month ago, it’s strange to have people ask me for references or recommendations. The obvious answer is yes, no matter how much I have going on. I always felt like someone asking you to write a reference or recommendation for them is something that transcends the mundane.

Right now, I’m in a position where my reference might have some sway. I am in a middle management role and have some connections in my workplace. But people asked me to be a reference when I was just a supervisor at my college gym as well. I like to think I”m someone who cares for and genuinely looks out for the people I directly work with. Everyone, however, wants to see themselves in that kind of favorable light.

I write this because when I’m trying to help another person get a job, there’s almost no point where I don’t “highly recommend” the person and rave about their positive attributes. There is a significant difference in my writing and advocacy for a person when I am passionate about it versus not passionate, and that shows in the passion evidenced in my references.

I write whole paragraphs listing specific instances of devotion to the work, and, in my work in education, devotion to students. I will rave for days if I need to — I want to help, and I want the people who trusted me with such an important responsibility to land okay.

But I am also no fool. Who is going to take a reference seriously if you don’t list “areas of improvement” or something the person could be better at? Who isn’t a person that could do better at their job in various areas of the craft?

I am no saint. It’s not like I go about my job thinking the most positive of everyone all the time. I do think there are things the person can do better, even if I don’t voice it to them. Usually, my middle management role still has me as a colleague of someone I am working with. I am not going to be the person to write them up nor am I their supervisor. We are in the same union.

And it’s usually a section that really pains me. It’s not like I’m going to write an entire five-paragraph essay about what the person can do better. So I do usually list one thing I noticed, to be honest and give a genuine recommendation that means more to the person reviewing it. And I think about how that weakness or area of improvement I list can be used against the person.

It’s something that really pains me to do, but something I think gives the applicant the best shot at getting employed. Everyone has something they can do better at the end of the day, myself and all of us included. And I know the weaknesses are usually resulting from some sort of positive situation or extenuating circumstance.

If a teacher struggles with classroom management, for example, like I myself did in my first year of teaching, it’s usually the result of wanting to be nice to kids. It’s usually the result of wanting to treat them with respect, being patient with them, wanting to be responsive to what they’ve gone through in their lives, and wanting to nurture them in a positive way instead of with unrelenting strictness, firmness, and ways that might traumatize the student.

How is that bad intent? How is that anything but what you might perceive, at the end of the day, as the right thing to do?

It’s only when you get farther along in your teaching experience does that impression grow more nuanced and more complex.

In another example, how can’t I include the life circumstances of, I don’t know, someone’s brother just dying when I list their weaknesses and moments of struggle in the workplace?

Of course, I am changing details of what I actually wrote on the person’s references, but I know I have to list one weakness or area of improvement, or the person reading the reference (if anyone reads it at all) won’t take it seriously.

In my workplace, your reputation matters. Supervisors call supervisors asking very directly about whether they should hire you. I’ve been through that experience twice.

Both times, I got hired in a new and better position, but do I wonder what negative things my supervisor said about me? Of course. Am I ever going to know? Most likely not. But I would bet there’s a 99% chance my past supervisor listed an area of weakness to my new one, even if it wasn’t a deficiency of character, morality, or devotion to the work.

If I heard it, I would know it’s not personal. But I would probably still take it a little bit personally because I’m the type of worker that feeds off of positive praise.

And so, listing one area of weakness is sometimes what you have to do if you want to give the person to get hired. I would love to be the person who doesn’t list any weaknesses and doesn’t think “I have to put something in this section or else they think I’m being disengenuous.”

Maybe I’m wrong and other people see it differently, but I understand I have to do something I don’t want to do to help someone I want to help.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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