Get the best when checking candidate’s References

In the recruitment process taking references is a very important process but very difficult. It has actually become even more difficult in the past few years because people are getting increasingly afraid of getting into trouble for saying anything negative about an ex-employee… so they either refuse to give references or they just say some b****** stuff that are useless.

The other issue is that when we take references, this is usually because we really want to hire the candidate and so we have a bias to just validate our initial opinion…. so we ask the wrong questions just to justify our initial decision / impression and therefore this is totally useless.

From my experience and past mistakes on checking references:

• Call with the goal of finding issues, not with the goal of getting the confirmation that the candidate is good. Set yourself in the right mindset.

• The questions you ask are very important. For example, if you call about a sales candidate and if you ask them if the candidate is a good hunter, you might get a YES, although this is not true, but it is easier for the person to say YES than to say negative things and also because they know that by saying YES the call will be shorter. So don’t ask closed questions, ask open questions…. In that specific case ask the contact for what type of sales role he thinks this candidate is the best fit? Then the person will have to say if this is more hunter or farmer…

• Questions I like: “If you were to hire this person back, for which job role you would hire this person?” or “What is the best job fit for this candidate?” As much as possible don’t tell the person you are calling for which role you are considering this candidate so that the person is not going to just confirm your choice. Ask very very open questions.

• Another question I like: “My goal is to make this candidate successful in our company, what advice can you give me on how to manage this candidate?” then the person will tell you important information that will help you make your decision on whether to hire this candidate or not and if you hire this candidate it might allow you to onboard and manage this person more efficiently, this is a priceless information that will be good for the candidate and yourself.

• Then, who to call is not easy…. of course you can only call the references that the candidate will give you…. you have to go through them…. but issue is that most candidate will give you the names of “friends” they had in their prior job… and even if those “friends” have great and impressive job titles, what really matters is to talk to their ex-boss, not their colleagues, friends, or even boss of other divisions… so you really need to verify this when calling the reference, you really need to understand what was the relationship between the candidate and the person you are calling.

Taking references is a major step in any recruitment process and unfortunately something we skip too often when we are too excited about a candidate.

And finally, you might end up hiring the reference of the candidate at the end…

There are tons of articles online on: The Right Way to Check Someone’s References