You’ve agreed to write a letter of recommendation, which means you genuinely believe this person deserves good things. The problem is translating what you know about their work into a letter that carries weight.
ChatGPT can speed up the process without making your letter sound generic.
You provide the specific accomplishments and observations, and the AI helps you shape them into compelling paragraphs that hiring managers and admissions committees will take seriously.
In this blog post, we explain how to write a letter of recommendation with ChatGPT.
To ensure you explore all possible options, we’ll also look at how ClickUp, the everything app for work, can help. 🤩
How to Write a Letter of Recommendation With ChatGPT
- Why Use AI for Letters of Recommendation
- How to Write a Letter of Recommendation with ChatGPT (Step-by-Step)
- Prompt Examples for ChatGPT Recommendation Letters
- Limitations of Using ChatGPT for Writing Recommendation Letters
- How ClickUp Helps You Write Better Recommendation Letters
- Structure for Recommendation Letters
- Templates for Common Recommendation Letter Scenarios
- Tips and Best Practices for Strong Letters
- Ethics, Privacy, and Policy Considerations
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhy Use AI for Letters of Recommendation
AI tools like ChatGPT offer a practical way to create well-structured recommendation letters that highlight a candidate’s strengths effectively.
Let’s look at why you should use such tools:
- Saves valuable time: Generates a solid initial draft in minutes, so you don’t have to stare at a blank sheet for hours
- Gives structural guidance: Organizes your thoughts into proper letter format with appropriate openings, body paragraphs, and closings
- Uses impactful language: Helps articulate accomplishments and qualities in compelling ways you might not immediately think of
- Eliminates writer’s block: Gives you a starting point that you can refine and personalize with specific anecdotes
The key is using AI as your drafting assistant, not your replacement. You’ll still need to add authentic details and personal observations that only you know.
📮 ClickUp Insight: 37% of our respondents use AI for content creation, including writing, editing, and emails. However, this process usually involves switching between different tools, such as a content generation tool and your workspace.
With ClickUp, you get AI-powered writing assistance across the workspace, including emails, comments, chats, Docs, and more—all while maintaining context from your entire workspace.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Write a Letter of Recommendation with ChatGPT (Step-by-Step)
Writing a recommendation letter can feel like another task squeezed into an already packed day.
If you use ChatGPT the right way, you get an error-free draft that’s still personal, credible, and aligned with your voice. Let’s understand how to write a letter of recommendation with ChatGPT. ⚓
Step #1: Gather candidate details
Before you feed ChatGPT with prompts, collect the details that shape the tone and direction of the letter. This step makes or breaks the quality of the output because the model writes based on the context you provide.
Here’s what to pull together:
- Who the candidate is: Their full name, current role, and what they’re applying for
- Your relationship: How long you’ve known them and in what capacity (manager, professor, team lead)
- Unique qualities: Their strengths, working style, and professional or academic traits you want highlighted
- Achievements: Numbers, outcomes, or examples that show their real impact
- Tone preference: Whether you want the letter to sound formal, friendly, concise, or persuasive
📌 Example: I worked with Carrie for 2 years after she made a career change. She improved our onboarding program, reducing ramp time by 22%. She’s at communication, leadership, and problem-solving.
Step #2: Draft effective prompts
This is where you turn your collected details into a clear and structured prompt. The more specific your instructions, the more accurate and helpful the ChatGPT-generated letter will be.
Your prompt should include:
- A short description of your relationship with the applicant
- What the letter is for
- A few notable achievements or qualities
- Any scenario or story you want referenced
- The tone and length you prefer
📌 Example: Write a one-page recommendation letter for my former project analyst, Carrie Adams, who is applying for a master’s program in data analytics. I managed her for three years. Highlight her problem-solving, remarkable skills in tech, and her initiative in building a weekly reporting dashboard that reduced manual work by 40%. Use a professional, warm tone.
Step #3: Review and personalize for authenticity
ChatGPT gives you the basics, but personalization makes it credible. Here are some tips to edit AI content to fit your voice:
- Swap any phrases you’d never say (e.g., exceptionally exemplary)
- Add one or two of your own sentences
- Reword the closing line into something natural to your voice
- Make sure the anecdote feels authentic and is placed in the right paragraph
- Remove overly formal lines that feel too dramatic
Step #4: Format and finalize
With the content polished, the final step is to add a personal touch. Format the letter professionally and make it easy to read, so the reader instantly understands your relationship with the candidate.
Finalize the AI-generated letter by:
- Including your name, job title, and contact details
- Keeping paragraphs short and readable
- Ensuring dates, names, and facts are correct
- Using a consistent layout with proper spacing
- Ending with a clear, confident closing statement
Use this final review to catch factual inconsistencies or tone issues before sending.
🧠 Fun Fact: In ancient Rome, letters of recommendation were known as litterae commendaticiae. Cicero, Pliny, and other elite writers used this form to recommend younger people to potential patrons. Interestingly, in those ancient letters, the writer often focused on praising themselves more than the person being recommended.
Summarize this article for me pleasePrompt Examples for ChatGPT Recommendation Letters
Getting the right output starts with crafting a clear, detailed prompt.
The more specific information you provide the large language model with, the more personalized and effective your recommendation letter will be. Try these ChatGPT prompts:
Basic professional recommendation
Write a recommendation letter for [Name], who worked as [Position] at [Company] from [dates]. Highlight their skills in [Specific areas like project management, communication, technical expertise], key achievements including [Quantifiable results], and character traits such as [Reliability, creativity, leadership]. The letter is for a [Job application/promotion] in [Industry].
Academic recommendation for graduate school
Create a letter of recommendation for my student [Name] applying to [Specific program] at [University]. They excelled in [Course names], demonstrated strong [Analytical/research/writing] skills, and completed [Thesis/research project/independent study]. Include their GPA of [Number], leadership in [Student organizations], publications or presentations, and potential for success in [Field of study].
🔍 Did You Know? In Germany, there’s a very formal, codified system for employment reference letters (called Arbeitszeugnis). Even negative assessments are phrased in carefully diplomatic (or euphemistic) language.
Scholarship recommendation
Write a recommendation letter for [Name] applying for [Scholarship name]. Emphasize their academic excellence (GPA: [Number], class rank: [Position]), financial need, community service including [Specific activities], leadership roles in [Organizations], and how this scholarship will help them achieve [Goals].
⚙️ Bonus: Master how to write LinkedIn recommendations that showcase impact, highlight strengths with clarity, and write endorsements that stand out.
Research position recommendation
Write a letter for [Name] applying to [Research position/fellowship]. Detail their research experience in [Specific area], methodologies they’ve mastered, publications (List titles), conference presentations, grant writing experience, collaboration skills, and innovative contributions to [Field].
🧠 Fun Fact: In 1534, humanist Juan Luis Vives published ‘De conscribendis epistolis’ (‘On the Writing of Letters‘), which taught how to write different kinds of letters — including petitions, congratulations, consolations, etc.
Career change recommendation
Create a letter supporting [Name]’s transition from [Current field] to [New field]. Highlight transferable skills like [Examples], relevant coursework or certifications in [New area], their passion demonstrated through [Volunteer work/projects], and qualities that make them adaptable, such as [Learning agility, resilience].
Summarize this article for me pleaseLimitations of Using ChatGPT for Writing Recommendation Letters
It’s essential to understand what ChatGPT cannot do when creating recommendation letters, so you can work your way around it.
Key limitations to consider:
- Produces generic letters: Without detailed input, AI generates formulaic language that sounds like every other recommendation letter, which weakens impact
- Lacks access to real performance data: ChatGPT can’t pull actual grades, project outcomes, sales numbers, or verified accomplishments; you must provide everything, and errors in your input are reflected in the output
- Misses emotional authenticity: AI struggles to capture the genuine enthusiasm, nuanced character assessment, and personal connection that evaluators look for in strong recommendations
- Requires significant editing: You’ll need to invest time adding specificity, adjusting tone, and ensuring the letter truly represents your relationship with the candidate
🧠 Fun Fact: During the Middle Ages, there was a formal study called ars dictaminis (Latin for ‘the art of letter-dictating‘) that taught people how to write formal letters, including recommendations, introductions, and other epistolary forms. These were rules for structure, phrasing, and moral tone, drawn from rhetoric traditions.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow ClickUp Helps You Write Better Recommendation Letters
ChatGPT can definitely help you write a recommendation letter.
But you’ll need to copy-paste job descriptions, achievement lists, project details, and upload performance notes before you even get started. That’s a lot, phew.
ClickUp is different. As the best ChatGPT alternative for workplace tasks, it already knows your workspace inside and out. After all, it is the everything app for work that combines project management, knowledge management, and chat—all powered by AI that helps you work faster and smarter.
Here’s a closer look at how ClickUp helps you write better recommendation letters. ✍️
Start your draft without staring at a blank page
When you begin a letter, you’re trying not to miss any achievements, metrics, project outcomes, and personality traits. You need everything in one place to shape it into a strong narrative.
ClickUp Docs gives you a drafting space that feels natural and flexible. It supports rich text formatting and collaborative live editing, perfect for when a candidate wants to share their input before you send the LOR.
Say you’re writing for Jordan Mitchell, who led a customer retention initiative. You create a Doc, add a section titled ‘Key Wins,’ bold his 12% retention lift, and insert a callout for a standout example. It even lets you add a small table tracking project names, metrics, and supporting links.
ClickUp Brain is integrated right inside this Doc. It acts as your writing partner, reading everything connected to Jordan’s work, including tasks, comments, attachments, and previous project notes. Contextually pulling those details, it drafts everything he needs without extra prompt engineering.
You can highlight rough bullets, such as ‘Led retention dashboard redesign,’ ‘Reduced manual reporting hours,’ and ‘Identified churn segments during Q2,’ and ask ClickUp Brain to turn them into a clean paragraph. One click inserts it directly into the Doc. Another click rewrites it for tone consistency.
📌 Example Prompt: Turn these bullet points into a five-sentence recommendation paragraph that focuses on measurable accomplishments and keeps an admissions-friendly tone.
Keep every letter request organized so nothing slips
During peak admissions season, recommendation requests appear in emails, messages, text reminders from students, random form submissions, and brief hallway conversations.
To streamline these requests, you can create a ClickUp Form. This way, students can submit all the relevant information you need in one place. ClickUp Automations can then take the administrative load.
Let’s say Emily sends her MBA letter request through your ClickUp Form.
The moment her submission lands, an Automation:
- Builds a task called ‘Emily LOR – Wharton MBA’
- Adds her January 15th due date as the task’s deadline
- Tags it ‘MBA’ and ‘Leadership Focus’
- Fills a checklist that includes drafting, internal review, and final proofreading
- Assigns your reviewer when the draft moves into ‘Needs Review’
- Sends you a 48-hour ClickUp Reminder before the deadline
Or you can add an Email Drafter AI Agent to your workflow at this point, which will already generate a first draft for you!
Use multiple AI models without switching tools
Sometimes you want different AI strengths for different parts of your letter.
ChatGPT for clean tone, Claude for long-form structure, and Gemini for technical data interpretation. Normally, you’d switch between tools until your browser becomes a chaotic mess, also known as AI Sprawl.
But with ClickUp Brain, you don’t have to anymore.
For example, Ava just completed a machine learning capstone. Her Drive folder has her Jupyter notebook and final report. Her SharePoint folder has team sprint notes. Brain brings both into one chat thread.
You can choose Claude to analyze the long report, switch to Gemini for a technical breakdown of her model accuracy, then switch to ChatGPT to refine your final paragraph for tone.
Speak your ideas out loud
ClickUp Brain MAX pulls all this into a single, standalone desktop app and supercharges it with voice-first productivity.
Because some of your clearest thoughts show up when you talk through the story out loud. You think about the time Marcus Hill handled a live server incident at 2 a.m., walked a junior engineer through his debugging process step by step, and kept the entire team calm while the system recovered.
Typing the entire explanation slows your momentum, drains the emotion from your delivery, and turns a vivid memory into flat sentences that don’t capture what actually made Marcus’s response impressive.
Talk to Text in ClickUp Brain MAX solves this problem by letting you speak naturally and converting your voice into text instantly.
Tap the shortcut key and start talking the way you would if you were explaining Marcus’s story to a colleague over coffee. The transcript appears instantly and copies to your clipboard. You can paste it into your Doc, highlight the key idea, and ask ClickUp Brain MAX to shape it into a paragraph that fits an admissions officer’s expectations.
A G2 reviewer shares:
🔍 Did You Know? One of the oldest surviving important letters is De litteris colendis, addressed by (or on behalf of) Emperor Charlemagne to Abbot Baugulf, around the 8th-9th century. It urged the education of clergy because many of them were illiterate, showing how letters were used to shape policy and reform.
Summarize this article for me pleaseStructure for Recommendation Letters
A well-organized recommendation letter follows a predictable structure that makes it easy for readers to assess the candidate quickly.
This typically looks like:
- Opening paragraph: State your relationship to the candidate, how long you’ve known them, and in what capacity. You should also include an immediate endorsement that establishes your enthusiasm level
- Body paragraphs (2-3): Each paragraph should focus on a specific strength or qualification. Use concrete examples with measurable outcomes when possible. Address skills relevant to what they’re applying for (academic abilities for grad school, leadership for management roles, technical skills for specialized positions)
- Character assessment: Dedicate space to personal qualities like integrity, work ethic, collaboration skills, or resilience. These soft skills often differentiate candidates with similar credentials
- Comparative statement: If appropriate, indicate where this person ranks among others you’ve worked with (‘top 5% of students I’ve taught’ or ‘one of the strongest project managers on my team’)
- Closing paragraph: Reinforce your recommendation with a clear statement of support and offer to provide additional information by adding your contact details
- Professional signature: Include your title, institution/company, phone number, and email address to establish credibility
🔍 Did You Know? In some places (especially in the U.S.), open records laws allow people to access recommendation letters that were submitted for hiring, tenure, or academic admissions.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTemplates for Common Recommendation Letter Scenarios
Having the right letter of recommendation template for your specific situation makes the writing process smoother and ensures you include all necessary elements.
Here are proven templates for the most common scenarios. 📝
1. Functional Simplicity College Program Letter of Recommendation by Canva
This template includes your institutional letterhead at the top, followed by the date and recipient details. Its body follows a clear three-part structure.
First, an opening that establishes your relationship with the student and the program they’re applying to, followed by two to three paragraphs that highlight their academic strengths and personal qualities, accompanied by specific examples. The closing reinforces your endorsement while offering to provide additional information.
🧠 Fun Fact: Cicero, the famous Roman orator, wrote letters recommending young clients to his friends. However, he often emphasized how being associated with him (Cicero) would benefit him, not just the person he was recommending.
2. Letter of Recommendation for Promotion Template by AIHR
The internal recommendation format opens with your name, title, and company information, followed by a direct address to the decision-maker. The first paragraph clearly states the employee’s name, current position, and the promotion you’re recommending them for, along with your working relationship.
What makes this template effective is its focus on leadership potential and readiness for increased responsibility. The closing paragraph provides a strong endorsement and includes your contact information for follow-up questions, maintaining a warm but professional tone throughout.
3. Letter of Recommendation for Scholarship Template by Template.net
This scholarship recommendation letter template features professional branding at the top, followed by a clear title and date. The opening grabs attention immediately, addressing the scholarship committee with strong, enthusiastic language about why this student deserves consideration.
It then flows seamlessly through their academic record, highlighting specific achievements and grades that prove intellectual capability. The template is a good choice because it balances professionalism with genuine advocacy, helping you make an emotional case alongside the factual one.
🔍 Did You Know? The American Historical Association (AHA) recommends that hiring committees refrain from requesting letters of recommendation until after the initial round of screening. This is to reduce the burden on letter-writers and to save time and money for candidates.
4. Recommendation Letter for Visa Application by Template.net
This visa application recommendation template gets straight to the point: you’re recommending this person for their visa and explaining your relationship to them. From there, it moves through their educational credentials and professional experience, with specific examples of their work and measurable achievements that prove their qualifications.
The key here is showing why their expertise matters and what value they bring. The letter wraps up with a confident endorsement and an offer to answer follow-up questions.
📖 Also Read: Best AI Email Writers for Professionals & Marketers
Summarize this article for me pleaseTips and Best Practices for Strong Letters
Beyond just using AI as a drafting tool, effective recommendation letters require strategic approaches that make candidates stand out.
Here are proven techniques to elevate your letters. 👇
- Use the STAR method for examples: Structure your personal anecdotes using ‘Situation, Task, Action, and Result’ to provide concrete evidence of the candidate’s abilities
- Deploy the specificity test: Rewrite your sentence if it could describe 50 other students applying and replace it with specifics (numbers, projects, actual quotes)
- Include the ‘failure-to-growth’ story: Add brief examples of how the candidate handles setbacks to reveal their character better
- Lead with your strongest point: Open with your most compelling observation or the candidate’s standout quality to immediately capture attention
- Deploy comparison anchors: Compare them to successful alumni, published researchers, or professionals in the field to give evaluators a meaningful benchmark
🔍 Did You Know? The art of writing letters (called epistolography) was a highly developed rhetorical genre in the later Roman and Byzantine eras.
Summarize this article for me pleaseEthics, Privacy, and Policy Considerations
Using AI to draft letters of recommendation comes with its own set of responsibilities.
Research from Foundry10 shows that 31% of teachers already use generative AI when creating recommendation letters, mainly for brainstorming key points, improving clarity, and adjusting tone. This shows how AI is already part of the recommendation in daily practice.
However, this adoption intensifies privacy and data-handling risks. Stanford found that many AI providers retain user-submitted text, log conversation data, and may use inputs to train future models. This makes student information, like GPA, awards, and personal stories, vulnerable if teachers paste it directly into AI systems.
There’s a clear need for clear institutional rules on what data can be uploaded and which tools meet compliance standards.
Bias remains a parallel concern. A PMC report notes that AI can reduce subjective variation in LORs by standardizing language, but training-data bias can still reinforce inequities if educators rely on model wording without review.
The most responsible approach pairs AI-assisted drafting with human correction for context, nuance, and fairness, ensuring the letter remains accurate, personalized, and ethically safe.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHere’s a Recommendation: Turn to ClickUp!
Writing a strong letter of recommendation starts with clarity on examples, structure, and intent.
ChatGPT helps you move past the blank page, but you still handle the real work: choosing the stories, adding the context, and shaping an honest endorsement that feels human.
ClickUp takes that process further. Here, you work inside one workspace that already holds the information you need. You draft in Docs, refine with ClickUp Brain, Brain MAX, and Talk to Text, and keep every request organized with Automations without losing time.
Don’t wait for an official summons. Sign up for ClickUp today! ✅
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
