Best Way to Check Someone's References
ben.casnocha.com
ben.casnocha.com
I might halfway pause and start a bad reference with, "Well..." and let the manager guess if he's perceptive enough, but I'd never speak ill of a former staff member. Too much chance of it biting the company back - it'd be pretty damn irresponsible of me to do that. But not calling back? Yeah, I'd do that. For great people? Callback the same day I get the message, no matter how busy, at least for a 90 second chat. Maybe I'm not everybody, but I think most halfway competent managers go out of their way to take care of the great people they've worked with.
I've got fierce loyalty pretty high in my ethics, but there's a lot of pragmatic reasons too. On any one event, you could blow it off, but it's pretty obvious on the whole who goes to bat for their people and who doesn't. It's not something you make a calculation on - "Hmm, no one will know or care if I don't help this particular time." It's a way of life - take care of people that take care of you. Feels good inside, world sees it, recognizes it, and treats you well. A good thing, top to bottom.
In years of calling references I never found them to be a predictor of anything at all. You get great references for awful candidates and vice versa. I don't even bother any more unless I know the reference personally.
Imho references to people you don't know are close to meaningless, especially in the tech field. It's good to know where a given candidate has worked before and what his duties were. But that's normally in their CV and from there it's all up to your judgement and testing.
A few more reasons why references are worthless:
- Many countries have laws that explicitly forbid said references to tell you anything that could "hinder the candidates efforts to find a new job".
- Without knowing the company and people the candidate listed as reference you have little means to judge their assessment.
- Even if a candidate delivered perfect results in his previous environment that does not mean he'll function equally well in your environment. Your people, your tech, your salary will all be different.
The article looks like the typical pseudo-science to me (is the author selling a book, perhaps?). In reality the references are amongst the smallest factors to consider.
At least in the tech-field a skilled interviewer will know what he needs to know after an hour of talking to the candidate. Paperwork is secondary.
However, if only 2 or 3 of the 10 references selected by the candidate return your call
Far better just to know how to interview a reference on the phone. If you're looking for the "is the candidate outstanding" response, just ask for specific details about what made the candidate outstanding. A crappy pro-forma reference won't have any.
If you were really serious about references, you'd track down backdoor references anyways.
The strategy, such that it is, is designed to get around the reality that many, many bosses are only allowed to say "I can confirm that $CANDIDATE worked from $START_DATE to $END_DATE and his final position was $TITLE." If you ask "Is the candidate outstanding? What specifically makes you think so?", you will hear "I can confirm that $CANDIDATE worked from $START_DATE to $END_DATE and his final position was $TITLE."
That said, like many brilliant engineering ideas for evading legal requirements by simple logical tricks that a profession filled with people who are paid $300 an hour to think of loopholes totally can't see coming, I strongly doubt this idea will work. You're not selecting for outstanding candidates, you're selecting for managers who are not risk-adverse.
A risk-adverse manager will ignore your little logic trap, call you, and say "I am returning your phone call with regards to $CANDIDATE. I can confirm that $CANDIDATE worked from $START_DATE to $END_DATE and his final position was $TITLE. Have a nice day." He will then document that he was asked for a reference for $CANDIDATE and followed company procedure to the letter. You have learned no useful information from this, aside from "Ahh, $PREVIOUS_COMPANY has a corporate policy to not provide useful references"
References are funny things. If you have to call them, you probably shouldn't hire the candidate anyways. If you have that much doubt in their skills, or integrity you're likely to feel that way regardless of their references.
If I were to receive this kind of call, I'd contact the applicant and ask WTF was going on.
Good Method to Check Someone's References?