Professional recommendations can help you land your dream job or get you into college. But truly great recommendations, the kind capable of making a significant difference, aren’t so easy to get.
Because, typically, what gets put in the letter is out of your control. It’s up to your old boss, professor, or that not-so-close connection you made searching through fellow LinkedIn alumni.
And who knows what they think is important to write about you? The letter might be so generic that your recommendation seems unreliable. Or it could be a recommendation that shares valuable information not listed anywhere else in your job application.
So, how can you prevent someone from giving you a less than stellar reference? By including a brag sheet with your recommendation request!
If you’re not sure what a brag sheet is or how to make one, don’t worry! Because in this post, I’ll be going over:
Let’s jump right in!
A brag sheet is list of your skills, education, and achievements made throughout high school. It may sound a bit like a resume, but they are actually quite different. While your resume typically only showcases your work experience, education, and skills relevant to a particular job, a brag sheet is a lot less formal. Its main purpose is to showcase who you are and what you've accomplished when asking someone for a letter of recommendation.
A brag sheet is not meant to replace or serve as a resume. But what it can do is provide a more nuanced perspective about who you are as a student and a professional. You do this by including things like test scores, academic awards, work experience, extracurricular activities, any clubs you were a part of, leadership roles you held, travels, and volunteer experience.
You can include data-driven results from your work, testimonials from your superiors, or even details about activities outside of your education that have helped build your professional skills.
A brag sheet can be used to get a letter of recommendation from someone. It helps the person writing the recommendation have a better idea of what they can highlight and makes it easier for them to reference your achievements.
But even if you don’t need a recommendation now, I would still encourage you to create one. Why? Because you never know when you'll need a letter of recommendation for a job or college application. And having a running brag sheet keeps you prepared for when you do. You can use the same sheet to do other important things throughout your career like:
How does a brag sheet help in each of those scenarios? Because it crushes doubt. Doubt over whether someone can write you a good recommendation. Doubt over whether you deserve a promotion or bump in pay. And self-doubt over whether you’re as good at your profession as you think you are.
A brag sheet will serve as a reminder — to you or whoever looks at it — that you’re capable of big things. But, for it to work the way that it should, you have to know how to make a brag sheet that helps others understand what you've accomplished.
Creating a brag sheet is simple. All you need to get started is a blank document. Of course, if you’re inclined to get more creative and use other tools, you can.
But if you want to start quick, open up a blank document and create your own brag sheet template with these 4 sections:
The next step is filling it in with all of the relevant information for your career. Not sure how to start? Take a look at the examples below for some inspiration!
Use these examples when you start to create your own. These brag sheet templates include two examples for each of the four main sections.
If you’re in your final year of college, use this senior brag sheet example to get recommendations to help you land an internship in college or stand out when it’s time to find employment.
Use a professional brag sheet example like this one when going for a promotion, asking for a raise, or updating your resume when changing careers.
Getting remarkable recommendations can take some luck. You don’t always know what the other person will write about you. But with a brag sheet, you can help guide the other person to emphasize your best achievements and skills.
Use the template and examples I shared here to create a brag sheet you can use the next time you're asking for a letter of recommendation, admission to college, salary raise, or job promotion. And keep it updated often so you can use it to help quickly write a resume for your next job!
Austin is the founder of Cultivated Culture where he helps people land jobs without connections, without traditional experience, and without applying online. His strategies have been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, & Fast Company and has helped people just like you land jobs at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, & more.
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