Ask HN: How do you deal with an ex-employer who is not writing a reference ltr? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with an ex-employer who is not writing a reference ltr?

3 pointsNTDF92 comments

Hi HNers,

I worked at a very large (100,000+ employees) corporation in California more than 5 years ago. I need an experience letter from that employer for my immigration process. The letter is supposed to document tasks performed and that I really was hired as a software developer and not as a janitor.

I contacted the manager there and he pointed me to HR. The HR then gave me a generic employment verification letter (which does not have job duties). They said that I should ask my manager for a letter with job duties and that they have no policy against writing such a letter.

When I contacted my manager again, he became unresponsive. No reply to emails or phone calls. He still works for the company and I had a friend check if he was logging into their IM system everyday.

Basically, he is screwing me and not writing me the letter. Very unprofessional.

Now, I really need the letter for my immigration process and they wouldn't accept any other proof of my employment there.

Does anybody know how I could ask for such a letter from that manager?

Thanks

That's a tough situation to be in OP. A few things you can do:

- Did you have any other manager during your time there? What about a senior tech lead/architect who could arguable be considered as your "technical manager"? Try asking them. Even if they now work for a different company, that's still fine. There's no reason to limit yourself to the one manager who's unresponsive.

- Ask your friends/colleagues in the company to send your manager a friendly reminder. Your manager may not care about you, but at least he'll care about not looking like a jerk in front of his colleagues and subordinates.

- Start going further up the food chain. Email anyone and everyone who was managing you, even indirectly, and ask them for such a letter. Ask your 2nd level manager, your department head, your division head, the VP, and even the CEO. As long as they managed you indirectly while you were there, their letter should be valid as well.

- Very similar to above, start putting social pressure on your manager to respond. Email your manager's current manager, explain your plight, and ask him if he could help. Mention that you haven't been able to get in touch with your manager (name him), but don't say anything else that's negative. People are generally more receptive to positively worded requests. If emailing your manager's manager doesn't get any response, try your department head. Then the division head. Then the VP... Email their secretaries as well, to ensure that someone else reminds them about the email. At some point, if your manager starts getting emails from people higher up the food chain asking him to help you out, he'll agree to do so just to avoid looking like a jerk.

The above steps are to be used sequentially and judiciously. Try the least threatening approaches first, and only if it fails, move on to something slightly more threatening.

Remember that your manager has something you want (a verification letter), but you have something he cares about as well: the power to embarrass him and expose him as a jerk. Your goal is to use this power in the slightest and mildest way possible, with the implication that a progressively stronger application is coming in the future if he doesn't respond nicely.

Thanks a lot.

Turns out I was subconsciously doing this kind of escalation. I called up a co-worker (who is now a manager in that company). He listened to my request in a friendly way and was willing to write a letter for me.

However, to verify the contents of that letter, he contacted my ex-manager. That put social pressure on him and he replied with the letter.

Gradual (but polite) escalation worked wonders.

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