Recently, I have been asked to write recommendation letters. That is a good thing, I feel my career stage has changed. I have written these blog posts (https://www.shinichiroyano.com/2022/01/13/how-to-become-an-associate-professor1-2/) (https://www.shinichiroyano.com/2022/01/16/how-to-become-an-associate-professor2-2/) about what I learned by writing a recommendation letter for the promotion of associate professor this January. This time I have written a recommendation letter for a postdoctoral fellow, I will leave some notes here.
I have read his CV carefully. He is currently a PhD student but I think he is well qualified for the job with my standard. I have asked several questions to him understand better and I wrote the best I can. He has four first-authored papers and two first-authored patents. His experimental skills are very impressive. He could create a large single crystal of some compound. The compound is known for more than 50 years however he is the first person who made a large single crystal to the best of my knowledge. He also could create another series of large single crystals. That is very impressive. They will be studied well in the next 10 years. I am happy to keep working along.
By writing his recommendation letter, I remembered a few students who had questions for me about their careers. Honestly speaking, they are three to five times smarter than I was in my PhD. I believe they will do great anywhere they go and many scientists want to hire them. So that, I don’t mind sending my recommendation letter anywhere to the US, Europe, Japan, or China. Even I would like to ask my colleagues whether they want to hire them. I am happy to find jobs for these students. Then, I realized (this is because they are great of course) an important thing for the young generation is to just ask whether they want to work at any institute or people around the world. If they are earnest enough, there are a lot of ways people can help.
Another thing I have learnt was I actually learned a lot by reading their CV carefully to write the recommendation letters. After carefully evaluating their work, I found that I can help them better by knowing their achievements. So I can suggest “why don’t you do this, do that? this part we can do together, that part I can suggest work with …?” Basically, we are writing recommendation letters for someone who we know well. However, we don’t usually evaluate their work that is not related to the collaboration between us. Now, we are collaborating more closely. So, I learnt writing recommendation letters are not only for the candidates but also for myself.
These are what I learned this time. I write recommendation letters because my supervisors or former bosses have written for me. But I like writing it because I learn so much during the process and we can collaborate more closely after that. So I am more than happy and honoured to write more letters in the future.