On Wednesday, Jan. 16, the University of Oregon (UO) PRSSA hosted Taraneh Fultz as a guest speaker at our winter term kick-off meeting. As we have had a large number of UO PRSSA students express interest in learning about event planning, Taraneh conducted an Events 101 workshop.
Taraneh had a great deal of interesting information to share about events; however, my largest personal takeaways were regarding how to request recommendations from employers. All public relations students have heard professors say that we should request recommendations on LinkedIn, but never do we hear good reasoning behind the action. Well, Taraneh suggested many reasons why students should do so. Here are the three points she made about recommendations – specifically LinkedIn recommendations – that I found incredibly helpful:
The recommendation will stay with you forever
Taraneh suggested requesting recommendations on LinkedIn because they will follow you throughout your career. Yes, that’s a good thing! Those recommendations will be on your profile forever, which means that even if you are interviewing for a position several years down the road your recommendations from entry-level positions will still be visible and relevant.
You can get the recommendation while your boss is working in the same capacity
People now change jobs much more frequently than in the past. If you wait several months to ask for a recommendation, you run the risk that your boss or supervisor will have moved on to work at a different organization; this makes it much harder to request a recommendation or use them as a reference. Ask your employer to write you a LinkedIn recommendation as soon as you complete an internship.
You can request a long-form recommendation letter easier
Asking your employer to write a LinkedIn recommendation now will make requesting a long-form recommendation letter in the future much simpler. When reaching out to your former employer, you can draw attention to the fact that they already wrote you a LinkedIn recommendation, and ask them to elaborate on the points that they already made.
I’m sure there are many more reasons to request LinkedIn recommendations. Why do you think LinkedIn recommendations are beneficial?
Post by Ellie Boggs, chapter president for the 2012-2013 school year. She is a senior at the UO studying public relations. You can reach Ellie at eboggs@uoregon.edu.
