I work in HR and I think reference checks are balls. There, I said it. I’m sorry. I know it’s an unpopular opinion. Send the HR police. I will surrender my badge.
In places I’ve worked before, ref checking has been treated in turns as anything from a box-ticking exercise to the ultimate be all and end all. The intent is of course to verify the truthiness of the candidates skills and experience. But here’s the thing: no one with half a brain is going to list a referee who is going to give them a bad wrap. And if they don’t have half a brain, how the heck did you miss that in the early stages of the recruitment process? That’s on you, kids.
The best referee, in a lot of cases, will be a candidates current manager – especially if they have been in that role for a long time. That might obviously be awkward: not many people want their boss to know they are looking to throw in the towel asap. So right off the bat, I’m speaking to someone whose knowledge of my preferred candidate’s work performance could be 4 or 5 years out of date.
So maybe my candidate lists someone else. The number of times I have played phone tag for two days with Dave, only to find out that Dave wasn’t Melanie’s manager at all – he was just a colleague. Nice chatting, Dave, but you’ve been no actual help.
And obviously there was that whole thing from last year when Hamish and Andy asked a random guy to act as a referee and he actually did a pretty good job of faking it. They called him ‘the best bloke in Australia’ while HR peeps and recruiters cried quietly into their coffees.
So if everyone is only listing good referees, or non-manager referees, or even fake referees, is there really value in the reference checking process? Are they a waste of time? Maybe. Are they going away? Probably not.
And that’s kind of sad, because it can be a very time consuming process that, if your questions aren’t effective, may yield very little reward. I know plenty of candidates who received glowing references and then turned out to be problematic or unproductive employees. I think value would be better added through more stringent screening processes and better interview questions which really probe for detail. But ref checking doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
With that in mind, if you are an applicant, there are a few things you can do to make this step in the process a smooth one. Help me out, you guys.
- List relevant, work-related referees.
- Ask before you list. Give your referees a heads up that you would like them to act as a referee, checking they will be ok with that.
- Don’t list personal referees (unless you are a school leaver with no work experience) – honestly, no one cares.
- Do indicate where you worked with the referee. Don’t just say “Mike Smith on x number”. Context is key. Say “Mike Smith, former manager at Woolworths, x number”.
- If you interview, give your referees a heads up that they may get a call. It helps them prepare, it helps HR people get phones answered, and even if we don’t like ref checks, we like that.
‘Til next time,
April All Year 