Comment by johnwh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnwh | Hacker News Reader

Backdoor references are very unethical in my opinion. Beyond the fact that you are telling a third party about someone’s job search without the searcher’s consent, you can also get a very biased opinion.

My wife was fired from a job at a well known University in the area. She had 2 bosses in a year, one of them twice after coming back from prolonged mental health leave. Within a month of coming back my wife’s boss had a long term relationship end which lead to my wife being blamed for everything and anything, and was then subsequently fired.

On the other hand, my wife has excelled at her current job. She has been promoted 4 times at this point to a director level position and is extremely well respected. If they were to call her previous boss (who has had multiple people promoted over her in the past 2.5 years), the review would be awful and not reflective of my wife’s work.

You know what would have caught this without any effort what-so-ever? Calling the company and verifying dates of employment. It is part of every job application, and is expected.

Backdoor references are very unethical in my opinion. Beyond the fact that you are telling a third party about someone’s job search without the searcher’s consent, you can also get a very biased opinion.

But frontdoor references are guaranteed to be biased no one (well, almost no one) is going to use someone that didn't like them as a reference, they are going to dig up someone that will say something good about them.

We had one DBA hire that was not very good, she lasted 3 months before we had to let her go because she just couldn't do her job. One of her references didn't have much good or bad to say, but her most recent manager (where she worked for 5 years), gave a very glowing reference, outlining all of the projects that she had helped with.

It wasn't until we had let her go that we found that that while the person that gave her a glowing reference actually was her manager, she was also her roomate... and her girlfriend.

> no one (well, almost no one) is going to use someone that didn't like them as a reference, they are going to dig up someone that will say something good about them.

If this is not the point of references, what is?

Also: for some levels of US Government Clearances the agents ask you "Who else do you recommend we talk to about This Person?". It might be interesting to see if it's commercially cost saving for some level of businesses to do this as well.

However isn’t the point that references are people who have worked with you and (hopefully) managed you. By calling a backdoor reference, you may not be calling a strong relationship and getting hearsay. For all the recruiter knows, they could be calling a coworker that asked the candidate out on a date and was rejected.

The whole point of references is that given the opportunity to put your best foot forward, can you find people to vouch for you. It may fall short, but so will calling a tenuous relationship.

I did quite well at my previous job (my boss has been a reference twice, in addition to my employee who took over my position when I left), but had a another specific manager been asked, I would have received an awful review, unrelated to my job, but because he hated my boss and therefore hated me and my team. We rarely worked together, and he has little idea of my accomplishments, but it wouldn’t be crazy to ask a director at my previous company for that backdoor reference.

Basically my issue is that I don’t believe that backdoor references are in any way more effective than regular references, but are tremendously unethical, and could lead to false negatives.

How does this work in the case when you're still employed at a current place and a looking to make a change?

Edit - I think you mean doing a verification after an offer is put out.

You mean like verify past employment dates and only verify the last employment date after they are hired and no longer work at their last employer?

right

Employment verification is common for things like loans, so in most organizations it does not stand out. It's also common for this to be farmed out to 3rd party companies at large companies to avoid the risk of lawsuits.

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