The problem is a lot of places will not make any further comment beyond confirming the employee worked there and perhaps the circumstances of their departure (resignation/laid off/fired). This is often for legal reasons.
My present employer (who I've finally decided to try and make my former) has a policy forbidding any employee from serving as a reference to any former employee. They are literally not allowed to comment in any way, but are told to forward all inquiries to a phone number which will verify employment (a number that no one actually seems to know).
Ostensibly, this is to protect the corporation from potential lawsuits; but it has a chilling effect on employees who are looking to leave.
So I'd warn anyone to be careful about working at a place like this, as it can make leaving much more difficult. A policy like this isn't something you'd generally think to ask about while interviewing, so I don't know how you'd find out about it ahead of time, but it's probably worth asking about.
I've had companies ask me if I could violate the policy and provide them references anyway, which I'm not a big fan of. As anti-employee as I consider the policy, I think it's important to follow the stuff you've agreed to (and I'm not sure what it says about a company who is that willing to have you violate the policies at your existing company).
Savvy employers will go out of their way, for instance by hitting up their network, to get "out of band" references for an employee. Those references are the ones that count the most. But when you give me a reference, and I call them, and all they'll say is "He worked here at XXX salary" --- that's a bad reference. Try to make sure that doesn't happen.
But now I'm genuinely curious: 1. how do you make sure references presented aren't extremely cherry-picked - does it just come out as obvious in the conversation? 2. what about more junior employees, who may not have much of a network for an employer to hit up?
You're better off cherry-picking your references than you are trying to be "honest" about them and not knowing for sure what your reference is going to say about you. As long as you actually worked with the person who's giving your reference, you're fine.
I may have just been really lucky in my career, but there isn't anyone I've worked with (either as a coworker, manager, or as an underling) who I wouldn't feel comfortable being a reference. That's not to say there aren't people who I wouldn't chose to be a reference (maybe we didn't work together very closely), but seriously, nobody who if I were on trial and the prosecutor called as a "surprise witness" I'd cringe and worry that they might say something negative about my work.
It's probably a good idea to secure agreement that, should a reference call come in, you're going to get 100% positive feedback. You can accomplish that without demanding 100% positive references; just say something like, "hey, Joe, I'm getting pretty far down the road with a potential gig and they're smart and might track you down for a reference... anything I'd need to be concerned about?".
Once a person tells you to your face that they're not going to say anything bad about you, they're a lot less likely to.
Whereas, if you don't have the conversation at all, your coworkers can tank you without even meaning to. People who aren't experienced giving references might even think it's a good idea to balance out positive things with some (they think) minor negatives. You probably want to nip that idea in the bud, if you can.
Incidentally: if you get called on to give a reference and you're wondering if maybe it'd be a good idea to sprinkle some talk about quirks and idiosyncrasies into a reference: don't. Just give boring good references.
I've done a couple dozen security clearance interviews for co-workers or past co-workers (which is basically a hiring interview on steroids), and the rule of thumb there is absolutely that you want to give as boring an answer as possible.
When I read this series of comments, for some reason I thought of the series finale of Seinfeld (the courtroom), which brought to mind that it might be useful to evaluate if in your career you've left a bunch of people who you wouldn't want a prospective employer to contact.
I mean, that last reference was someone I worked for, and I didn't rip them off or anything, but I didn't do particularly good work. I did some sysadmin work for them, and I was also hosting their shit and, kinda sorta went out of business (well, that part is... complicated. the upshot is that I couldn't host their servers anymore.) The process was moderately messy and there were some unpleasant outages before I finally pushed them off on to a competitor of mine that I had worked with before.
but yeah, apparently that guy, in spite of my reservations, gave me a glowing recommendation.
Oddly enough, I ended up doing a less than stellar job for this person, too. I mean, I didn't rip him off, and my early work was okay, but I took several jobs from him later on when I simply didn't have the bandwidth to actually do the work. I mean, I didn't take money for the work I didn't do, but still, accepting a project and then just flaking on it is pretty rude.
I mean, I hire people without experience, or people with experience who have been forced into extended periods of unemployment/underemployment. Part of the deal is that they get experience working for me and go on to bigger and better things eventually. I give references. (I mean, I pay a legal wage as well, but I understand that anything I can pay them is nothing compared to what they are worth if I made a good choice hiring them)
People call and practically interview me. Me, the ex (and sometimes current(!)) employer. I mean, it was part of the deal, so I always try to give a good reference, but man, sometimes it just seems like they are overdoing it. One guy sent me this giant excel worksheet written in a horrible parody of English. I think I wrote him back with a textual (and good) recommendation, but I didn't fill out the xls. My guy got the job, too, so I guess it was okay, but I think that's expecting a little bit much out of an ex-employer, really.
Now, another thing you need to remember as an employer answering a reference check call? Legal bullshit aside, there is zero reason for me to say anything bad about an ex-employee of mine. I'm doing the ex-employee a favor, so either I'm going to make that a good favor and give the kid a glowing review, or I'm going to save myself some time and say something to the effect of "sure, that kid worked here, sure, I'd hire them again. Company policy prevents me from saying more." - I mean, I'm conscious of my deal with my employee, so it's usually the former; if someone works for you for more than a month or two, there are good things to say about them. (I mean, unless you are unable to fire people, and, well, I'm not unable to fire people.)
So yeah, from that point of view? I don't put a whole lot of stock in references, personally. I mean, if you actually verify the phone number, which most people don't, they do mean something, just, well, not as much as people seem to say.
Yeah, you could count all "yes he worked here, yes he's eligible for rehire, company policy prevents me from saying more" as black marks, but what if that really is company policy? what if the person giving the reference is just really busy and wants you off the phone?
Personally, I'm not sure you could even take a "yeah, that guy was a lazy shit" reference seriously; I mean, it probably says as much about the employer as the employee, more, maybe, if they are willing to take the risk of saying something bad about an ex-employee when there is zero upside to that risk.