Behance recommendation generator
A Behance recommendation generator drafts a specific, first-person endorsement of someone you have worked with. LinkedIn keeps these on the profile, Facebook keeps them on business pages, and most networks have no such field at all, so elsewhere the text becomes a post or a quote you hand over. You supply the facts and it arranges them.
A person and their role, or a company and what it sells.
Include how long, and one thing that was genuinely hard.
Results, moments, decisions. Leave out anything under NDA.
Free, no account. Written for Behance.
How to use it
- Name the person or company and what they do.
- Choose your relationship to them, since that is what a reader weighs first.
- Write down what you worked on together and one thing about it that was hard.
- Add anything measurable you are allowed to repeat in public.
- Generate, then edit until at least one sentence sounds like you rather than like a reference letter.
- Send the draft to them before it goes anywhere, and check the length against the limit on Behance if you are posting it: We have not yet verified Behance's published limit against its own documentation, so this page does not state one, and the network's own composer is the thing to trust.
Praise without evidence reads as a favour
Everyone has read the recommendation that says someone is hardworking, passionate and a pleasure to work with. It moves nobody, because it is what you write when you owe a person something and have nothing specific to say. The reader knows that, and discounts it to zero before they finish the first line.
What survives the discount is a fact the writer could only know from being there. What the person was handed, what state it was in, what they did about it, what happened afterwards. One sentence naming the awkward part of the project does more than a paragraph of adjectives, because the awkward part is the thing a stranger cannot invent.
what to write when you cannot quote numbers
Numbers help when you have them and you are allowed to say them. When you are not, an unquantified specific still works: the release that shipped on the original date after two people left, the client who renewed without being asked. Reach for a scene rather than a score.
Anything under an NDA stays out, and so does anything about a customer who never agreed to be named. This is public writing with your name on it, and the person you are trying to help does not want their reference to be the thing a former employer reads twice.
the words that make a recommendation worth nothing
Skip the buzzwords. Nobody has been persuaded by rockstar, ninja, guru or unicorn in a very long time, and reaching for one tells the reader how much thought went into the rest of it.
Stacked adjectives fail the same way. Four positive words in a row is a sentence carrying no information, and a reader skims past it looking for the part where something happened. One adjective attached to a thing they actually did will survive.
Say how you know them, and when
A recommendation carries whatever authority the relationship gives it, so state the relationship in the opening line. A manager can speak to how someone handled being told no. A direct report can speak to how they handled having power. A client can speak to what was delivered. A peer can speak to what the work was like from the next desk. These are different claims and a reader treats them differently.
Timeframe matters as much. Two years alongside someone is a different evidence base from one workshop, and pretending otherwise is the tell that gets a recommendation ignored. Say the real length. A short honest window with one sharp example beats a vague implication of long acquaintance.
when you were their manager
You are the only person who can say how they handled being told no, what they did when the work was reassigned, and what they were like to give hard feedback to. Other managers are reading for exactly that, and almost nobody writes it. Name the uncomfortable thing you asked them to do and what came back.
Stay out of the performance-review voice while you do it. A phrase like consistently exceeded expectations carries the tone of a document written under obligation, and every reader who has written one of those knows what it is worth.
when they were your manager
A recommendation written upward carries the one thing no peer can supply, which is what this person was like to work for. Say what they did with the power they had: how a decision you disagreed with was explained to you, or what happened the day you brought them bad news.
Write it plainly rather than gratefully. Thanks reads as obligation, and somebody weighing them for a leadership job is looking for evidence about their behaviour rather than evidence that you liked them.
when you sat on the same team
You watched the work at close range without being accountable for it, which makes you the most credible witness to what they were like on an ordinary Tuesday. Name the thing you handed over and got back, or the meeting where they changed your mind. A peer recommendation that stays general is the weakest one on the profile, because sitting nearby is not evidence.
The cross-company version is the same job with one addition. Say which company you were at and what your side needed, since a reader who knows neither organisation cannot tell what the collaboration cost either of you.
when you were paying them
A client is the only one who can say whether the promise matched what arrived, and the only one who watched them handle something going wrong on somebody else's money. That is the sentence worth writing. What slipped, what got fixed, whether you hired them a second time.
If you are recommending a company rather than a person, the equivalent is saying what you bought, what you were comparing it against, and how long you have used it. A review that never mentions the alternative reads like it was solicited, which it often was.
when one of you was mentoring the other
A mentor can describe the one thing a manager almost never gets to write down, which is the rate somebody improved. You watched them meet a problem they could not solve and come back able to solve it, and you can say how long that took. Nobody weighing them for a job a level up can get that from anywhere else, so it is worth more than another paragraph about what they can do today.
Written the other way, from mentee to mentor, the material worth using is what they actually did. What they told you that you did not want to hear, or the room they got you into. Gratitude on its own reads as manners, where a specific favour reads as evidence.
Where it lives changes what you write
One set of facts becomes a different piece of writing depending on where you file it, because the reader changes and so does how long the text stays up.
on a profile, where a stranger reads it years later
On LinkedIn a recommendation sits on their profile under your name and stays there for years, read by strangers deciding whether to hire. It should be written for a reader who knows neither of you, which means naming the role and the context rather than assuming them. On a Facebook business page the same logic applies to a company.
Date the work inside the text. A reader landing on it in three years has no idea when any of this happened, and a recommendation about a job that ended long ago is still useful when it says so.
as a post, when the network has no such field
On the networks with no recommendations field, this becomes a post, and a post is a different object. It appears to your followers rather than to anyone evaluating them, it has a length ceiling, on Behance that is We have not yet verified Behance's published limit against its own documentation, so this page does not state one, and the network's own composer is the thing to trust., and it disappears down the feed in a day. That argues for something shorter, warmer and more personal, and for tagging the person so it reaches their profile at all.
Tell them it is coming. A post about someone who is job hunting quietly, or who has not told their employer anything, is a favour that can land as a problem.
as a pull quote on somebody's website
A third case is the quote for a website or a case study, where whoever pastes it will cut it to two lines. Write the strongest sentence first and make it able to stand alone, then ask to see where it ends up before you agree.
Agree on the attribution at the same time. Your name, your title and your company are going on a marketing page, and the version of that page a year from now is not one you get consulted about.
when the thing you are recommending is not a person
A company, a tool or a newsletter takes a different shape, because the reader is deciding whether to buy or subscribe rather than whether to hire. What they want is the problem you had, what you were using before, how long you have been on it now, and one thing it is bad at. That last part is what makes the rest believable, and leaving it out is why most of these read as solicited.
For an agency or a supplier the same questions land as who else you considered and what happened the week something went wrong. A vendor who never had a bad week is a review of a short engagement, and any reader who has bought anything knows it.
The honesty line, which is not decorative
You are signing this, and that is what separates drafting a recommendation with a model from drafting a post with one.
never let a draft supply a number
A recommendation is a claim you are signing. Do not let a model fill in a number, a job title, a client name or an outcome that you did not supply. Anything invented here is a lie told in your name on a page that a hiring manager may read years from now, and the person it damages is you.
The invented detail is rarely dramatic, which is what makes it easy to miss. A percentage that sounds about right, a team size rounded up, a product they touched but did not own. Read the draft with one question in mind: could I say this sentence to their old employer and stand behind it.
send it to them before it goes up
Two habits are worth keeping. Send the draft to the person before it is published, because they will catch the detail you misremembered and they may need something under NDA removed. And write it yourself when you can, using this to reorganise your own words rather than to originate opinions you do not hold.
They may also want a different emphasis from the one you chose. Someone moving from engineering into management needs the paragraph about how they ran the project, and you would not know that unless you asked.
a profile where every recommendation sounds the same
The other failure mode is volume. A profile carrying eleven recommendations that share one cadence tells a reader they were all drafted by the same tool, or by the recipient. One recommendation that sounds like a specific human is worth more than five that sound like a template with a name swapped in.
If you are the one collecting them, ask each person for a different project rather than a general endorsement. Different material makes different writing without anybody having to try.
say so if any of it pays you
If you were paid to write it, given the product free, offered a referral fee, or hold equity in the thing you are praising, put that in the text. Advertising rules in a number of countries require the disclosure and the networks have their own version of it, though the practical reason is the better one: a reader who works it out afterwards discounts everything else you have ever recommended.
Referral bonuses count. So does the arrangement where somebody recommends you back the same afternoon. Neither of those is wrong, and both are things the reader would want to know, so one plain line saying it costs you nothing you wanted to keep.
Questions
Does Behance have a recommendations feature?
LinkedIn does, on the profile, where your text appears under your name and stays there. Facebook has one on business pages. Most other networks have nothing equivalent, so a recommendation there is a post, a reply or a quote you send the person to use elsewhere. The drafts above are written for whichever of those Behance gives you.
How long should a recommendation be?
Long enough for one specific example and short enough that a phone reader finishes it. A few tight paragraphs is the usual shape on a profile. If you are posting it on Behance instead, the ceiling is the post limit: We have not yet verified Behance's published limit against its own documentation, so this page does not state one, and the network's own composer is the thing to trust.
Is it dishonest to draft a recommendation with AI?
The judgement has to be yours and the facts have to be yours. The arrangement of the sentences can come from anywhere, the same way a template or a colleague's proofreading can. It becomes dishonest the moment you publish a claim you have not personally verified, which is exactly what an unedited draft invites.
How do I ask someone to recommend me?
Ask directly, name the project you want them to talk about, and give them two facts they may have forgotten. Do not send a finished draft for them to sign. Some people will ask for one anyway, and that is their call to make rather than yours to assume.
Should I recommend someone I did not enjoy working with?
No. A lukewarm recommendation is legible to every reader and does more harm than silence, to them and to your own credibility. Declining is a normal thing to do and you do not owe a reason.
Should I recommend someone I barely worked with?
A recommendation written by somebody with nothing to describe is visible as one, and it does the person no good. The smaller gesture is the better answer: a one-click skill endorsement where Behance offers one, a comment under their work, or an introduction to somebody who needs what they do. Keep the written recommendation for the person whose work you can actually describe.
When is the right time to write one?
While the material is still fresh. The end of a project, or the week somebody leaves. Waiting until they ask means writing from memory about work you last thought about two years ago, which is how a recommendation ends up made entirely of adjectives.
Is anything I type here stored?
Your inputs go to the model that writes the draft and are not saved to an account, because there is no account. Even so, treat it like any other external service: leave out anything covered by an NDA and leave out personal details the person has not agreed to make public.
Can GrowSocialelion post to Behance?
Not yet. Behance is in the catalog with a published status and it is planned, but its adapter has not shipped, so nothing here claims we can publish to it today. The tool above is free either way. See the status of all 49 networks.