Procedure for Recommendation Request Draft
The draft must express sincere need without implying entitlement, acknowledge the requester's time without understating the ask, and be warm without being presumptuous.
CLASSIFICATION NOTICE: Recommendation Request Draft (RRD) Issued by: Bureau of Professional Correspondence, September 2021
Classification
The recommendation request draft is hereby classified as a second-order professional document: a document whose purpose is to request the creation of another document, and which therefore inherits the full anxiety of the original document while producing no direct output of its own.
The recommendation request draft is a cover letter for the cover letter.
Required Elements, as Established by Practice
The draft must contain: a greeting that is warm but not presumptuous, a reminder of the relationship that does not read as a reminder, an explanation of what the recommendation is for that is specific but not so specific as to feel like instruction, an acknowledgment that the recipient's time is valuable, a deadline that is stated without pressure, and a closing that leaves the option to decline open without making declining seem like the expected outcome.
All of this must fit in three to five sentences.
Procedural Obstacles
The greeting is drafted three times. "Hi" feels informal. "Dear" feels formal. The recipient's first name alone is selected. This takes four minutes.
The second sentence is drafted six times because "I was hoping" implies uncertainty, "I wanted to ask" is less formal than appropriate, "I'm reaching out to ask" is technically accurate but registers as slightly cold, and "I would be grateful if you might consider" is twelve words and contains a conditional that softens the ask to the point of ambiguity.
The draft takes longer to write than the recommendation will take to read.
The Absurd Rule
The draft must not appear to have been drafted. A draft that reads as carefully composed implies that the recipient's response warrants extensive preparation, which implies that the recipient might say no. A draft that reads as casually written implies disrespect for the recipient's time. The target register is effortless professionalism, which requires the most effort of any register and must produce no visible evidence of effort.
Contradiction on File
The request is for a document that describes the requester positively. The request cannot state this directly. The request must imply it through structural indirection: asking for "a few words" when more than a few words are expected, asking for "anything that comes to mind" when what comes to mind matters significantly.
This is professional correspondence. All professional correspondence is some version of this. The recommendation request is simply the form where the indirection is most concentrated.
Status
Draft in revision. Estimated completion: one additional session.