Some tips for my students about organising a reference

The first thing is of course to make sure they are going to say something positive about you - how do you do this? The easiest way is to gauge from the enthusiasm of their response to the request for the reference. If they sound lukewarm or going through the motions, think about other possible referees.

Assuming that you have found the appropriate person there are a few simple things you can do to make life easy for the referee:

• Find out yourself and inform the referee of precisely who the reference should be addressed to, their correct title, job description, address etc.
• Find out yourself and inform the referee of precisely how the reference should be conveyed, eg by letter, email, fax and to what address - and indeed precisely when it needs to be conveyed. The referee is not a party to the information that is in your own head about this - you need to inform him or her precisely what you are asking them to do.
• If the reference is to be in the form of a letter I suggest that you ask the referee if it would help if you were to draft up the letter that you would like the referee to send and let them adjust it as appropriate. The draft letter should always invite the recipient to contact the referee if he or she can be of any further help.
• Likewise if it is a form to be filled in, ask the referee would it help if you supplied draft answers to the questions that they could then work with. Some such forms may ask technical detail that your referee may just not know, related to your own academic performance.
• Finally I suggest that you send the referee a copy of your cv in case they want to refer to that in finalising the reference or to deal with any follow up inquiries made by the body you have applied to. Also in the cases where the referee does not need to furnish a reference just yet, but may be contacted in future, it would be important for the referee to have your cv to hand at that point.