Faculty receive requests for recommendations from their students every year. They want to support their students as they apply for internships, full time jobs, and graduate school, but often struggle with how to do this in an efficient and effective manner. This is especially challenging given the number of students they have and the late and often incomplete nature of recommendation requests. Although there are several online guides on how to request letters of reference from professors, students may not proactively search for these, so it can be helpful to have published guidelines. Developing reference request guidelines can go a long way towards addressing this problem by clarifying qualification and documentation requirements up front and encouraging students to take a more active role in the process. This article guides faculty into creating guidelines and how to engage students in the process. By requiring students to be engaged in the reference request process, faculty are helping them to take responsibility for their own professional development, which will be imperative as they work with managers and mentors in the future. This also allows students to practice professional communication by writing and organizing documents and submitting them in a timely manner.