Mars Gets Women, but he does not get the New Improved Process for Recommendation Letters for Students
my current experience is that one of the online service providers is ok, the one used by Caltech and Harvard astro.
I've also had the browser incompatibility and mystery crash issue (no, it is NOT my responsibility to get a current version of IE so that another university can subcontract their letter processing to the lowest bidder).
One service asks for personal information and demands a waiver from the person submitting the letter. That one gets bounced, and a snail mail letter sent - and for departments that continue using that "service" I am actively contemplating pink crayon block letters on ruled yellow legal pads for future letters.
I appreciate efforts to reduce boxes of paper.
I do not appreciate efforts to move the grunt work onto individual faculty, particularly not uncompensated extra work.
- Log in to post comments
I'm only a research scientist, so I have never had to do grad school letters of recommendation, but all I can say to this is AMEN, brother!
Note to anybody doing anything on the Web: Unless you are offering/selling software for download, you have no reason to know or care what platform I'm using, or (as long as it offers adequate SSL protection) what browser I'm using. If your web site won't let me use my platform and my browser, I will take my business elsewhere if possible.
Also, if you are requesting personal information there had better be a good reason for it, and controls to ensure that this information does not fall into the wrong hands. For a letter of recommendation, it's reasonable to request name, position, and postal address, but since it's only a once or twice a year (if that) occurrence that's not a good reason to require recommenders to use accounts.
While pink crayon on yellow legal pads would be a bit extreme for departments who are first-time (for you) offenders, I would have no objections to breaking out the old typewriter (if you still have one; if not, use Courier or cmtt font to simulate it) and banging it out. Any department that persists in using a user-hostile service for recommendation letters needs to be whacked with a clue-by-four.
These online sites aren't going to save a whole lot of paper anyway. In most cases (the applicants which are not obvious rejects) the recommendation letters are going to be printed out anyway.
Heh, i should have known you were way ahead of me blogging about this issue!
Try other (free) browsers -- Camino, Firefox, Opera.
I found that Jet Propulsion Laboratory's employment website fails completely with a Safari browser, but works fine with IE -- and Camino, Firefox, and Opera. (JPL's HR desktops are all IE-native, and JPL's website is roll-their-own.)
You miss the point, TDS. If you're applying for a job at JPL, they have some leverage over you, and it's worth your while to go to another browser if their web system crashes Safari (which it shouldn't, if the programmers have done their job right). It is an entirely different thing to impose such a requirement on somebody who is submitting a letter of recommendation. The job applicant has no recourse other than to not apply to JPL. The letter writer does, and requiring him to use a different OS/browser combination than the usual is an unreasonable requirement. MacOS/Safari is hardly a rare setup, especially among scientists, and there is no excuse for a web programmer to fail to check that that combination works.
Man, I thought you'd read every one of my posts!
I like to think I will never have to apply for a job at a place that uses IE exclusively, but I ought not to tempt fate, eh?