Writing a letter of recommendation requires a first hand knowledge about the person whom you are going to refer. It is supposed to be starting with your brief description of the individual's personal traits like his strengths and weaknesses at a personal level. For example, you can tell that he is a confident person but at times he becomes a little over confident. This is something that is concerned primarily with his personality.
After the personal traits, you must then mention about his strengths and weaknesses as a professional. You must start with strengths and intermingle the weaknesses in those strengths. While writing an individual's weaknesses, you must keep one thing in mind that you are writing a 'RECOMMENDATION LETTER'. You must not over emphasize upon his weakness, rather emphasis should be laid upon his strengths. There can be another idea that you can write positives and negatives separately. However that is not always a good idea. This kind of writing requires a very strong knowledge of playing with words and you must be aware of the strength of the words you are going to use.
Lastly, you can draw a table in which you can have different features of his personality in the vertical order, like confidence, Discipline, Regularity, Steadfastness, Innovation etc. and you can have excellent, good, average, satisfactory and not satisfactory in the horizontal order.
After the personal traits, you must then mention about his strengths and weaknesses as a professional. You must start with strengths and intermingle the weaknesses in those strengths. While writing an individual's weaknesses, you must keep one thing in mind that you are writing a 'RECOMMENDATION LETTER'. You must not over emphasize upon his weakness, rather emphasis should be laid upon his strengths. There can be another idea that you can write positives and negatives separately. However that is not always a good idea. This kind of writing requires a very strong knowledge of playing with words and you must be aware of the strength of the words you are going to use.
Lastly, you can draw a table in which you can have different features of his personality in the vertical order, like confidence, Discipline, Regularity, Steadfastness, Innovation etc. and you can have excellent, good, average, satisfactory and not satisfactory in the horizontal order.