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[kriket]

Hello,

This probably comes up quite frequently, but having read the article on the chronicle today titled "Are Your References Reliable?" made me want to write and ask about it anyways. 

So, I had a sort of falling out with one (of two) of my post-doc mentors at the end of the Fall and decided not use mentor #1 as a referee after the falling-out had occured. (He was on the list of references to places before).

I've had requests for letters of references since and have used mentor #2, graduate advisor and other collaborators. My collaborators and graduate mentor have told me that they are writing strong letters. Mentor#2  (who was involved in the "falling-out" process with mentor #1) has not said anything about my letters/his support but has mostly continued to promptly and immediately respond to my requests for letters.

After reading the article today, I was wondering what your opinions would be, re. the impact of receving a bad letter from mentor#2, while having great ones from the others. Do I have any options at all for this round on the job-search? And, finally, if mentor #1 was on my initial "list of referees" but am not getting a letter from him now, does it influence the SC?

Much appreciate your feedback.

[offthemarket]

It all depends on what the letter says. There are a) bad letters (that are well intended but do not provide real support), and there are b) negative letters (those that concretely say bad things about the person applying for the job)

A type a "bad letter" isn't that serious - simply that the candidate misjudged the person's ability or interest in putting together a solid letter.  (I once had a person who dearly loved me, and was effluent about how great I was to the point of embarrassment, but apparently I learned that her letters were brief and lacked details and didn't help me at all. Fortunately, someone told me about this early on.)

A type b "negative letter" depends on the substance of the negative criticisms. At the least, it says that the candidate isn't capable of judging the character of others or how other see them. At the worst, it identifies a toxic trait that would immediately rule out the candidate. It all depends on what is in there.

[seniorscholar]

One of the not-often-mentioned advantages of Interfolio is this: you can have someone you trust with an office address at another university ask for your references, read them, and give you a simple answer: "get rid of reference x" or "everything's fine; they're all ok."

I will tell you that a friend elsewhere offered to do this for me 30+ years ago, when the letters were at a university's dossier service, and clued me in that one of them -- from someone for whom I'd done good work and who had offered me extra and valued opportunities -- said "Scholar has always been an outstanding and dependable teacher. However, she has recently been divorced."  I couldn't even get angry: this was just a clueless and tone-deaf male at a time when there were not a lot of women with the qualifications and publications I already had at that point. But I got rid of the letter by telling the campus dossier service, "since there are 5 letters in my file now, will you remove the one from Professor X."