EVALUATION LETTERS

These are usually detailed assessments of an employee's work performance as part of an organization's regular employee review process. Typically, they are written by employee's supervisor and are attached to individual's performance appraisal and placed on their personnel file.

RECOMMENDATION LETTER TIPS AND STRATEGIES

The following tips apply primarily to writing of recommendation letters and reference letters as defined above. (This list is summarized from "Instant Home Writing Kit").

1. Write It Only If You Want To If you are asked by someone to write a letter of recommendation about them, you don't have to say "yes" automatically. If it is someone you respect for their work, and you have mostly positive things to say about them, by all means write letter. There is no point saying "yes" and then writing a letter that says nothing good about person, or worse still, concocting a misleading positive assessment of someone.

2. If You Must Refuse, Do It Right Up Front On other hand, if someone asks you to write a letter of reference for them, and you know you will be hard-pressed to keep overall letter positive, say "no" right up front. No point in hesitating and leading them on to believe that answer might be "yes". A gentle but firm "no" will usually get message across to person. Explain that you don't think that you are best (or most qualified) person to do it.

3. Suggest Someone Else If you feel you should refuse, for whatever reason, it may be helpful for you to suggest someone else who you think might have a more positive and/or accurate assessment of person. They may also be in a better position to do assessment. Usually there are a number of possible candidates, and you may not in fact be best person.

4. Write It As You See It Writing a less than honest recommendation letter does no one a favor in end. It is likely to backfire on you, person being recommended, and new employer. Also, many employers and head-hunting agencies check references. How would you like to be called up and have to mislead people due to questionable things you may have written in a reference letter?

5. Be Honest, Fair, and Balanced Honesty is always best policy when it comes to writing recommendation letters. At same time, try to be fair and balanced in your approach. If in your estimation, a person has five strengths and one glaring weakness, but that weakness really bothers you, make sure you don't over- emphasize weak point in letter, based on your personal bias. Just mention it as a weakness and move on.

6. Balanced Is Best An overall balanced approach is likely best one for a letter of recommendation. Even if your letter generally raves about how excellent person is, some balance on other side of ledger will make it more credible. After all, nobody's perfect. There must be some area where person being recommended needs to improve. A bit of constructive criticism never hurts.

To see a fully-formatted "real-life template" of a letter of recommendation, click on following link:

http://www.writinghelp-central.com/recommendation-letter.html

Here are some briefing guidelines -

1. Clearly state research objectives. What is it that you want to know?

2. Supply background information. What is history of market? Define problem to be solved or reason for research. 3. Set action standards for research. What decision will you take once you have answers? For example - "We will use this research to help us target our advertising more effectively."

4. Decide who it is you are researching. eg. Former customers, existing customers, people living in a certain suburb, people of a certain age group or whatever. How would you define group?

5. Decide what information you are seeking. Considering set objectives, what areas need to be investigated?

6. How about timing? Does anything need to be taken into consideration regarding timing of research? For example, results might differ before and after an advertising campaign.

When are research findings needed by? Are there any information priorities?

7. Consider what research method would best suit your needs and budget. There is no point in using cheapest method of researching market if it fails give you accurate results. For example, a written questionnaire sent out with your accounts is likely to generate a different response than might be expected from a focus group.