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Free Sample Letter of Recommendation for Business MBA
To whom it may concern:
I think extremely highly of Hongbin Wu, and therefore it is my great
pleasure to write a letter of recommendation on his behalf, for entrance
into your MBA program.
I have known Hongbin for more than one and a half years. I hired him to
work for me as a Research Analyst at SRR in July of 1996. SRR is a
full-service marketing research firm whose clients are primarily large
radio stations and other music oriented media companies such as Capital
Records, and MTV Networks. My roles at SRR include manager of new
product development (research products and the software to analyze the
results), and internal research consultant (sampling methodology and
multivariate statistical analysis). In addition, as a member of the
management team at SRR, I am charged with constantly working to find
more efficient, cost-effective means of gathering respondent level data
and producing our research products. Since joining SRR as a Senior
Research Analyst, and more recently as Manager of Research and
Development, Hongbin has been a major weapon in my arsenal of tools for
accomplishing these tasks.
Hongbin is a creative and original thinker. He has native intelligence,
great curiosity about people and ideas, and plenty of common sense that
he has applied to solving many problems at SRR. In addition, he has
demonstrated excellent powers of observation, and an ability to
communicate and suggest change in effective but non-threatening ways. To
illustrate…
Early on, Hongbin was assigned to an important research project as a
fill-in Project Manager. In this role he was responsible for the
technical aspects of creating a computer-based survey questionnaire
(from one given to him by our client services department), monitoring
the telephone data collection process, and completing the data
processing and analysis of the survey results.
From the beginning of this assignment, Hongbin began to re-define our
expectations of a good project manager. He started by participating in
discussions with the client and suggesting and implementing several
changes to the script that shortened its length and clarified the
instructions to respondents. Without prompting or precedence he spent
several days working odd hours, observing and monitoring interviewers
and supervisors as they began to field this 2000 person study. Within a
few days he had shortened and clarified the script even more - removing
redundant questions, collapsing multiple questions into one, and
improving the flow from question to question and screen-to-screen - all
to the great praise of both interviewers and the director of our phone
center. He had also observed something about a particular aspect of the
interviewing process that was common to all surveys at SRR. He wrote a
memo to several managers outlining his proposed change in methodology
that clearly demonstrated the value of his idea: an annual cost
reduction of close to $50,000. At the end of the project, he wrote a
several page critique of our interviewing and supervisory staff. He
described the characteristics and skills employed by the best
interviewers he'd observed and made suggestions for how these skills
could be taught to the entire staff. His recommendations were well
received and soon implemented by the very manager whose staff was being
critiqued; such was the value of his contribution and the skill and
sensitivity with which he presented his ideas.
In processing the survey results, Hongbin also quickly learned to use
several advanced statistical techniques including Cluster Analysis and
Discriminant Analysis with which he had only a passing knowledge prior
to the project.
Hongbin has also demonstrated his technical and analytical abilities in
helping create a new model for bidding on new business, and in
spearheading the development of tool that used a Maximum Likelihood
algorithm for ascribing missing respondent data. Recently, Hongbin
helped me identify the most desirable qualifications and background of
computer programming candidates, and he assisted me in the recruiting
and mentoring of two Chinese student interns to this position. They have
both made significant contributions in only a few months of employment.
Hongbin is not a native English speaker or writer, and thus, he has had
to work very hard to clearly communicate his ideas. I have seen him grow
in this area tremendously over the last one and half years. His
attentive listening and great enthusiasm has helped him overcome any
language limitations. He is both self-confident and self-deprecating,
and has a great sense of humor that has helped him form strong
relationships with subordinates, peers, and members of our management
team. Managers in other departments frequently seek his advice, and his
name is always at the top of the list when choosing team members to
spearhead important company initiatives.
In all of these areas, Hongbin Wu has gone beyond expectations, and has
out-shined all others in his peer-group at SRR. His efforts were
recently rewarded with a promotion to the position of Manager of
Research & Development.
Hongbin is very likeable and ambitious person. I have no doubt that he
will be a serious and enthusiastic student, and someday a quite
successful senior level manager or entrepreneur that you would be proud
to call an alumni.
Sincerely,
Mark Peterman
Vice President
SRR |
