Is your institution committed to an equitable hiring process? Is it also concerned about reducing unnecessary costs? What about increasing productivity without sacrificing the quality of work life? If you answered yes to all three — and you should have — would it surprise you to learn that eliminating the hiring requirement for letters of recommendation could accomplish all three?
We arrived at our position against letters of recommendation based on our experience, one of us as a university dean and the other as a former university administrator turned higher-education consultant. We know that letters-of-recommendation requirements are often well-intentioned. We also know they produce unintended consequences that work against many of academe’s stated goals, such as increased faculty diversity.
It’s time to examine some of the faulty beliefs that have sustained the letter-of-recommendation requirement for far too long.
Faulty Belief No. 1: Letters of recommendation are a useful indicator of candidate quality and character. Academics in this country are enamored with letters of recommendation. We require them for admission decisions. We expect them in a job candidate’s dossier. We make them an essential component of the application process for assistantships, fellowships, and awards. Want to break into academe, move up, or stand out? An application and three letters of recommendation are the nonnegotiable first steps. Why? Because we believe these letters have magical powers to separate those who are qualified from those who are not.
For an enterprise that positions itself as the keeper and purveyor of fairness and rigor, academe demonstrates a surprisingly unquestioning belief in letters of recommendation — despite mounting evidence against their validity as unbiased instruments of decision making. Debates about the value of recommendation letters in admissions have raged for years, given the lack of evidence for their value in predicting student success. In hiring, reference letters are equally unhelpful in predicting success on the job and are well known for being biased against women for many reasons, including differences in language used to describe male and female candidates.
Theoretically, it’s possible to teach letter writers the dangers of referring to women as “organized and detail oriented” while describing men as “innovative and visionary.” It may also be possible to teach everyone reading these letters how to decode them — how to be alert for phrasing such as “I’m not aware that she has ever made mistakes in the lab” and how not to be swayed by letters that refer to men as “Dr.” and call women by their first names. We could even suggest that all letter writers and readers use the bias calculator to analyze letters before sending or reading them. But all of that seems like so much work.
And speaking of work, let’s consider the amount of time and effort that goes into letters of recommendation. In his account of what it took to find his first tenure-track job, Jeremy Yoder determined that, of the 112 job applications he submitted, 57 percent required accompanying recommendation letters. Assuming each department required three letters, that means almost 200 had to be requested, written, and managed for a single job candidate. Think about all of the other work his letter writers could have accomplished had they not been writing letters on his behalf.
Let’s also consider the work these letters create for every search committee and its administrative staff. Imagine 100 applications that require each candidate to have three reference letters. Better yet, imagine 300 such applications. That is a lot of document management. Because attaching letters of recommendation to applicant materials is an administrative headache, many institutions have decided to upgrade their applicant-tracking systems just to organize all of those documents. We consider that more of an expense to support a bad habit.
Given those documented problems, academe’s attachment to recommendation letters is curious. Why are we so committed to a part of the hiring process that no one else outside of our sector seems to be using? If these letters are so essential to assess candidate quality, why aren’t they required by every employer? And why don’t universities throughout the world insist on them?
Is it possible that what matters most to search committees is not the content of these letters, but the stamina and ingenuity required to produce them? That leads us to ...
Faulty Belief No. 2: By requiring letters, we make sure we receive applications only from people who actually want the job. “We don’t want to waste our time considering candidates who are not truly interested in us,” search committees tell themselves. “Requiring letters of recommendation makes candidates prove their sincerity and commitment to being part of our hiring process.”
You would think that a customized cover letter would be enough to assess candidate interest in the opening. Apparently, more evidence is required. Unfortunately, the requirement for recommendation letters can actually reduce applications from interested, worthy candidates. Here are some reasons why:
- Wanting to please. Candidates, especially early in their careers, want to please their advisers. Often they are more comfortable requesting letters for jobs at high-prestige institutions than at places their advisers may consider less impressive.
- Trying to be strategic. Job seekers know they have to be judicious in imposing on their letter writers’ time. So they might not bother to apply for some openings, fearing (not always accurately) that they are out of reach. That might also stop them from applying to small, less-known institutions.
- Letter writer exhaustion. It is well known that women, people of color, and attentive teachers are asked to write more letters than others. Candidates may find themselves competing for their letter writers’ attention, and not able to get it from people who could be their best allies.
- Limited options. As a candidate, the more professional acquaintances you have, the bigger your pool of potential letter writers. Let’s think about how those connections are made. Some come from helpful introductions by advisers and colleagues. Others come from being visible in academic circles by attending academic conferences and similar events. Given that there is often a link between meeting attendance and economic means, who gets to go and who doesn’t? Candidates who have limited personal resources or who are from institutions without professional-development budgets will have a far narrower network. While the letter-of-recommendation requirement isn’t meant to be discriminatory, it unintentionally benefits people with more status and money. Candidates from small departments may also be disadvantaged. Internal candidates may find securing letters both difficult and awkward. International scholars from countries where these letters are not standard may find it challenging to find people willing to write on their behalf and familiar with content conventions.
- Asking is not easy. Some job candidates struggle to request letters of recommendation over and over again. In a blog post, Michael Huemer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado, wrote that the process “unfairly rewards people who are unashamed about bothering their friends for favors, while systematically disadvantaging people who are considerate of their friends’ time, or who tend to make friends with low-status people, or who tend to have unusually honest friends.” Is it possible that the letter requirement is leading institutions to hire aggressive and greedy people over those who are more generous and respectful of other people’s time? It is worth thinking about.
Faulty Belief No. 3: Change in higher education is impossible. Higher education changed quickly when Covid hit because it had to. Things we “knew” to be true before March 2020 turned out to be not true at all — for example, that in-person instruction is always superior to online, that remote work makes collaboration impossible, that being “in the office” is essential for productivity, and that social justice can be achieved by teaching people how to navigate entrenched systems.
Abandoning letters of recommendation in the hiring process is one way to continue the momentum and drop a counterproductive practice. It will reduce dependence on the goodwill of others, increase diversity, improve productivity, and save time and money. It is not often that we get more by doing less.
Still not convinced? Can we at least ask you to gather a few of your colleagues to explore the following questions?
- What barriers do letters of recommendation create?
- How might they limit expressions of interest from qualified candidates?
- What do we learn from recommendation letters that we could not learn through a few conversations toward the end of the process?
- Why does higher education insist on these letters when other employers do not?
- How do higher-education institutions in other countries manage to get by without requiring these letters?
- What might the time devoted to writing or reading these letters be better spent doing?
- If we can’t eliminate the requirement, can we at least wait until the very end of the hiring process to ask for letters?
We would love to hear your answers.
