You're a faculty member always busy with research, students, services, conferences, travel etc. One of your students (or postdocs) asks to provide a reference letter (for graduate study, postdoc, employment etc.) and mail or e-mail it to the provided address by a certain date. You'd have to move things around in order to find a time for writing a letter. Due to your busy schedule (or poor organizational skills), you tend to postpone it for later times. And then..Oops! You've missed the deadline or even forgotten doing it! How do you react? Do you think that it's not the only opportunity for your student/postdoc and more interesting opportunities will come, and hence it's not a big deal? Or, you realize that because of you the student/postdoc will not be able to compete or even considered for a position, and thus you feel guilty? And what if it happens more than once? Also, when you receive a request for such a letter directly from the institution, do you react differently and treat it with more respect?
Dear @Serge, it is of great importance that we do it on time! Someone's future may depend on it. So, let us be responsive to our former students in our very busy days! I do react in the same manner, I do it as fast as I can, no matter request for reference letter came directly from the institution or not!
Of course dear @Ian.
I think this could be a good reading as well as to LISTEN! What do You think?
http://journalism.uoregon.edu/podcast/why-are-letters-recommendation-important/
http://journalism.uoregon.edu/sites/default/files/LORs.mp3
I'm sure some of us have been on both sides. I'm just trying understand a mindset of people who don't do it. Yes, I know some of them and they always have excuses for not doing it. It appears that they position themselves above all things that don't affect them directly. They appear nice and pleasant but ignoring such requests put peple who depend on it in a horrible situation because they even don't know this. Perhaps, this is a very naive question but I still can't understand why would they do this. It's like committing a crime in science!
Yes dear @Serge. As You have said, such people committ crime in science! Candidates should be warned about such behaviour in order not to ask for a letter of reference from these "nice" people!
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