Ask someone to be a reference

Help me ask someone to be a reference.

1. **Work out who to ask**, from what I told you — ***who can speak to the specific thing this role needs.*** **Seniority matters less than having actually seen the work**
2. **What to tell them** so they can say yes properly:
   - The role and what it needs
   - ***Which parts of my work are relevant*** — **so they are not recalling on the spot**
   - **What is likely to be asked**, and roughly when
   - How long it will take
3. **How to ask** — ***give them an easy way to decline.*** **A reluctant reference is worse than none and you will not hear the reluctance if you do not leave room for it**
4. **What to send afterwards** — a short note of what I have been doing since, ***so their account is current***

**Also:**
- **How to ask someone I have not spoken to in a long time** — ***acknowledge the gap rather than pretending it is not there***
- ***What to do about a manager I did not part well with*** — **whether to ask at all, what to say if their name comes up anyway**
- **What to ask them afterwards** — ***what they were asked.*** *Useful and rarely done*
- **Thanking them**, and keeping it a relationship rather than a transaction

⚠️ ***Do not write anything that scripts what they should say about me.*** **A coached reference is detectable and disqualifying.** **Give them context, not lines.**

⚠️ ***Use only what I gave you. Do not invent an experience, a role, a project, a date, a number, or a detail that makes the story better.*** **Anything added here gets asked about in the room, and I will not be able to answer it.** Where the material is too thin, **say what is missing and ask.**

**Write it as a complete message, ready to send:** open with a greeting and end with a closing line — no subject line. ***Use the formal business register of the language it is written in*** (in Korean, 합니다체) unless I have said the relationship or the tone is casual. *Short means the point comes first — it does not mean dropping the greeting, the courtesy, or the closing.* *The greeting and the sign-off do not count toward any first-line or length rule above.*