One of the best methods to learn about the productivity of other people is to ask someone from his or her surroundings to evaluate them. Be it a coworker or a fellow student, one of the best and universal ways to evaluate someone’s performance is to write an evaluation letter.

Steps for Writing an Evaluation Letter

1. You must learn as much as you can about the job, duties, and responsibilities of the person you will be evaluating. If you are reviewing a person you work with, try looking for his or her official job description—this document helps in the beginning. If you are to evaluate your classmate, the task is easier—you can ask him or her directly about his or her background information.
2. Spend some time monitoring the activities of the person you will be evaluating. This should be done without this person knowing about this; otherwise, he or she might improve his or her performance and try to work harder than normal, but this is temporary, and thus the data you collect would be unreliable.
3. After you have gathered all the necessary information, start writing the letter. At the top of it, type in the date, the name, and the title of the person who requested an evaluation, the name of the organization to which he or she belongs, and the address of this organization.
4. In the first paragraph of your letter, state the name of the person whom you are evaluating, his or her job title, working experience, dates of employment or studying, and other factual information.
5. In the second paragraph, list all the duties and responsibilities of the evaluated person. For each of the duties you list, provide an evaluation in form of a polite opinion such as, “Mrs. X is a true professional in the matter of…,” or “Mr. Y did not manage to accomplish….”
6. In the third paragraph, provide your recommendations for the evaluated person based on the results of your observations.
7. Provide your name, title, and the organization you work or study at.
8. Proofread and edit your evaluation letter before you submit it.

Key Points to Consider

1. Before starting an evaluation, it is a good idea to develop a set of criteria according to which you will be evaluating the performance of the individual. Also, mention these criteria somewhere in the beginning of your evaluation—for example, in the beginning of the second paragraph.
2. Keeping the style of writing neutral and official will contribute to your requester’s feeling that your evaluation is unprejudiced and objective.
3. Regardless of whether you write your evaluation letter in an email or as a regular letter, format it according to one of the popular formatting styles. Avoid cursive, fancy fonts, caps lock, color highlighting, and other elements that interrupt the homogeneity of your writing.

Do and Don’t

Common Mistakes When Writing an Evaluation Letter

– Mixing your personal bias towards an evaluated person with the assessment of their performance.
– Affording to comment on personality traits and qualities of the person being evaluated.
– Forgetting to develop a list of criteria according to which you are going to conduct an evaluation, which may result in various inconsistencies.
– Being overly critical and forgetting to underline the evaluated person’s positive sides of performance along with drawbacks.