MLA Guidelines on Letters of Recommendation

These recommendations were originally written by the Executive Council in 2014 and were revised in 2021 by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR) and the Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities. CAFPRR made additional revisions in 2023.

Suggestions for Graduate Students Applying for Assistant Professorships and Lectureships

Talk to your dissertation director(s) and committee members about your plans to go on the job market well before mid-September, when institutions start advertising open academic positions. Establish a timeline for the application process and convey the deadlines to your letter writers as soon as you know them. Learn what documents and how many completed dissertation chapters your advisers will need to see in order to write a thorough and accurate letter, and make sure to provide these materials a month to six weeks before the application deadline. If a deadline is approaching and a letter has not been submitted, remind your recommender of the deadline.
In both the Guidelines for Search Committees and Job Seekers on Entry-Level Faculty Recruitment and Hiring as well as Postdoctoral Applications and the section of these guidelines below, “Suggestions for Members of Hiring Committees, Department Chairs, and Deans Who Oversee Departmental Hiring Protocols,” the MLA suggests that these hiring groups delay requesting letters of recommendation and writing samples until after the first screening of job applicants. Not all schools follow these suggestions, though. You should therefore have your portfolio completed, including letters of recommendation, as soon as possible so that you can respond quickly to different schools' deadlines for letters of recommendation.
Talk to your letter writers about how you and they will handle the logistics of submitting the letters, especially if the positions you are applying for use different methods to receive documents. See “Suggestions for Directors of Graduate Study and Faculty Members Who Serve on Graduate Student Placement Committees” below for more on submitting materials through applicant tracking systems.
Talk to your dissertation adviser or graduate director about how many letters you are requesting, and from whom. The MLA recommends no more than three or four letters for most candidates applying for assistant professor or lecturer positions. (Two or three are required for most fellowship and postdoctoral competitions.) The general rule is that each member of your dissertation committee should be in a position to write a knowledgeable letter about your accomplishments. If, however, you are in a situation where letter writers who are commenting on your scholarly writing cannot observe you teach or if there is one person in your department who regularly observes and writes about graduate student teachers, then your dossier should include a separate teaching letter. If you are applying for positions that require competence in more than one language or area of scholarly inquiry, then you may also need an extra letter.
If you are going on the job market for a second or third time, be sure to contact all your recommenders the summer before you plan to update your dossier. Provide your recommenders with detailed information about what you have written, published, and taught since you were last on the market. If you have new publications, send copies of them. Your recommenders will then have time to think carefully about what kind of updating might be appropriate.

Suggestions for Faculty Members Writing Letters of Recommendation

Writing letters of recommendation is an increasingly demanding faculty responsibility in which faculty members must represent graduate students accurately and enthusiastically for competitive academic careers as well as for a range of careers outside academia.

Consider providing print or electronic guidelines about what you typically need from graduate students to write them well-informed letters of recommendation for whatever careers they envision. Be clear about when you need to see their materials to send (or upload) your letter to meet their first application deadline. (See “Suggestions for Directors of Graduate Study and Faculty Members Who Serve on Graduate Student Placement Committees” below for issues raised by applicant tracking systems, which are used by many postsecondary educational institutions.)
Ask to see all materials your student plans to submit as part of a standard application for an academic position: cover letter, CV, personal statement, statement on diversity, teaching portfolio, writing sample, and any other supporting materials the student wishes to share. For positions outside academia, ask to see their résumé and cover letter and, if you are not familiar with the extent of their career preparation, invite a conversation about relevant professional experience or coursework, internships, professional certificates, credentials, qualifications, etc. Even if you are not specifically asked to provide feedback, students often benefit from your editorial eye on all these documents.
If you are directing multiple students who will be applying for the same positions, try to avoid repeating formulations that might minimize their specific achievements (e.g., “The best student I’ve had in ten years”).
If you are directing a student’s dissertation, make every effort to observe them teach an undergraduate class and ask if they are willing to share course evaluations or teaching portfolios, if applicable. If a student is on a nonteaching fellowship or if your schedule doesn’t permit you to visit a student’s classes, consider having it recorded (many Centers for Teaching and Learning offer this service) or inviting them to guest teach one of your undergraduate classes, or a part of one. Consider also setting aside time to talk with graduate students who have not had much teaching experience in their major academic field about how they would design a syllabus for an advanced course in that field as well as a general introductory course. In the current job market, graduate students benefit from having at least one recommendation from a faculty member who knows enough about the student’s teaching and scholarly work to be able to draw connections between the two areas of competence. Students applying for nonacademic jobs can also benefit from a classroom observation, which aids recommenders in describing their group management, public speaking, and interpersonal skills.
Whether your department has an individual or committee that supports students through the job search, be sure that your students are aware of resources such as the MLA’s Career Resources page and check those resources yourself to ensure that you are providing your students with up-to-date advice on preparing for careers both inside and outside academia. Of special use to students will be the following web pages: Guidelines for Interviews for Academic Positions, Guidelines for Search Committees and Job Seekers, Advice to Graduate Students: From Application to Career, and the varied resources housed in Connected Academics.
Questions often arise regarding the desirability of referring to dimensions of students’ identity such as race, gender, age, parental status, nationality, or disability status. In addition, it is important to recognize the potential significance of pronouns, shortened (nick)names, name changes (both first and last), and the hyphenation of names. We strongly suggest that in all such cases, recommenders discuss the issue with the candidate and honor the candidate’s decisions. Recommenders should also let students know that they are under no obligation to disclose any of the aforementioned identity information in their job applications, particularly with international students, as this may differ from the application norms in other countries.
The MLA recommends that letters of recommendation for academic jobs be two to three pages long. Whatever their length, such letters should offer a detailed and engaging statement about the candidate’s qualities and accomplishments as a scholar, a teacher, and an engaged member of the community. Recommenders may craft different letters for academic jobs depending on whether they emphasize teaching or research. Even for research-oriented positions, lengthy descriptions of the student’s intellectual project(s) should not form the bulk of the letter. Such descriptions are often perceived as competing with those in the student’s own application letter; that document, by convention, is approximately two pages long and covers the student’s research. Faculty letters longer than three pages put a burden on those who read large numbers of dossiers.
Letters for careers outside academia are typically no more than two pages and should focus specifically on the skills valued by the employer. Talk with your student about how they have developed their interests in nonacademic positions and the steps they have taken to gain relevant training. To support your students as strongly as possible, consult a source on how to discuss transferrable skills in your letter and confirm that your student is familiar with such sources. One such resource is “Transferable Skills for Humanities PhDs.”
Job searches often take several years, and consequently you may be writing letters for your students after they graduate and take on visiting positions or other full- or part-time short-term appointments. Respond to students’ requests for revised letters by asking for updates of accomplishments and goals, and update your letter accordingly. Once a student mentee has graduated, it is especially helpful to frame their work as one would that of a colleague. This may mean reducing some descriptions of the student in classes or seminar papers and expanding on their professional activities and impact in the field.

Finally, we invite recommenders to be encouraging and supportive of graduate students throughout this arduous and often multiyear process.

Suggestions for Members of Hiring Committees, Department Chairs, and Deans Who Oversee Departmental Hiring Protocols

The MLA recommends that hiring committees set a clear limit of three to four letters in job ads for assistant professor positions. Ads that contain phrases like “send at least three letters of recommendation” can easily be interpreted as signifying that having more than three letters is desirable. Hiring committees should discuss how many letters they really need to assess a candidate for a particular job. Some committees searching for an assistant professor with competence in disparate fields or in multiple languages may wish to set a higher limit on letters (e.g., five). But in the light of the time it takes to write and to read careful letters, the MLA urges those who write job ads to consider the benefits, to faculty members and to applicants new to the job market, of restricting the number of letters requested.
Consider whether the committee needs to see all letters for all applicants at the first stage of selection. Some faculty readers of dossiers don’t read letters of recommendation carefully, or at all, until the applicant is at the semifinalist or finalist stage. Other faculty readers rely on recommendations in making initial decisions about candidates. The expected size of your applicant pool could be one factor in your department’s decision about whether to request letters up front. In the United Kingdom, reference letters are normally solicited only for finalists in a junior job search, and this practice has been adopted by some institutions of higher learning in the United States. Moreover, some academic institutions in the United States no longer require letters of recommendation at any stage of the hiring process; instead, they require contact information for three to four references and arrange to speak with them if the candidate becomes a finalist. Finally, consider the mailing or electronic-submission costs graduate student applicants will incur under your current procedures.
If your college or university has its own applicant tracking system, it will increase the burden on letter writers and applicants, who may have to negotiate a different system for each institution. Consider discussing these challenges with your department chair, your dean, and perhaps members of the upper administration so that they can consider them in future decisions about how to receive application materials.

Suggestions for Directors of Graduate Study and Faculty Members Who Serve on Graduate Student Placement Committees

Consider requiring all graduate students in your department who are going on the job market for the first time to submit their materials for review well before mid-September, when the MLA Job Information List begins to post jobs for the academic year.
Consider having the graduate director or a faculty member helping with placement review letters of recommendation for technical errors (e.g., typographic errors, last year’s date, discrepancies in statements about when a student will complete their degree, etc.) and for appropriateness to particular institutions.

Suggestion for Administrators of Applicant Tracking Systems

Consider removing automatic word or character limits for recommendations. While suggesting a maximum length for letters (e.g., no more than two or three pages) is helpful for both writers and readers, imposing a word or character limit may require recommenders to spend time revising letters at the last minute.