Hiring Secret: Best Way to Vet a Candidate

This is not indicative of the type of employer-employee relationship I would wish for, from either side of the table. You're presuming an awful lot to spend someone's social capital, without consent, for the express purpose of soliciting negative comments about them.

Suppose a candidate did a reverse background check on Hubspot by cold-calling an investor or customer, quietly, to solicit dirt on the company prior to evaluating a job offer? That strikes me as either a) too socially unaware to function as a professional or alternatively b) borderline sociopathic.

I love it when psychopaths write articles. They're being serious, but they sound like they're writing an Onion article! Hilarious and sad.

Anyway, this is why I never answer the phone. Nobody calls you because they have something for you. They call you because they want something from you. Why should I give you an honest review of my friend? If I lie and say he's a 10, my friend will like me more and I will have a laugh at your expense. If I tell the truth, my friend will like me less and the end result will be having no friends. Why would I do that just to save you, some douchebag I've never met, some money? It just doesn't make sense.

You can't be a software engineer for long without working in some shitty environments filled with TPS reports, dysfunctional management, and clueless executives. It's especially discouraging when you're formerly thriving company starts devolving into this said mess, usually when it fails to manage its growth appropriately ("production went down! no more production logins for anyone except our horribly understaffed sysadmin staff!") or when its core product starts showing its age ("we're going to pivot! to high growth markets! best in class! jack dorsey! jack dorsey!")

Not all of us handle this well, and I don't know about everyone else, but I have at least one job in my past that I left with some burned bridges. The idea of interviewing for a job and having my potential new employer calling the Bill Lumbergh-equivalent whom I eventually lost my shit about and publicly chewed out for being a moron, for an opinion about me, literally puts me in a cold sweat.

So this article would worry me, but I've seen it in practice a few times, since the Los Angeles tech scene is small enough that a lot of people have at least one stint at a small set of companies (e.g. Yahoo, MySpace, PriceGrabber, Citygrid, etc). Usually it's not quite so deliberate as the article paints of stalking mutual connections on LinkedIn. The typical scenario is someone on another engineering team asking, "hey I'm interviewing X, did you work with him when you were at Y company?" and I'll say, "yeah, he was really badass" or some equivalent. Even if I don't have a great opinion of him, it's usually something like, "Well I think he got let go when they did layoffs in 2009, but his manager was a dick so who knows."

Software engineering one of the few meritocracies left. If your quality of your work is good and you're respected by your peers, then Bill Lumbergh's opinion of you probably doesn't matter. And if it does, it's probably not a place you want to work at anyway.

Wow. This is horrible advice. I'm sure it works for the hiring company to get a better picture of the candidate, but this is unethical and potentially illegal in some states/countries. Legal issues are why many companies recommend/require references in a specific format- 'this person worked here from [date] to [date]', etc... devoid of any 'opinion' statements.

Here is a per-state summary of job reference shield laws (sorry, not sure how current it is): http://www.crimcheck.com/resources/job-reference-shield-laws...

Oh wow, these are helpful comments. I now realize the author is advocating actually stalking down someone's personal acquaintances. Yeah, the professional protocol here is contact the provided references only. Going outside that and engaging in web stalking is a huge no no. If I found out someone had done that to me, I would be extremely reticent to accept a subsequent offer, it's a clear privacy violation. I would definitely be wondering what other lines they would feel no hesitation in crossing.

Awful. This could destroy a company's hiring pipeline.

The cost of retaliation by a spurned candidate are HUGE. All it takes is a few tweets or blog post about how company X is going to blow your cover during your job hunt, and all the candidates that are currently employed will run to the hills.

Has this guy ever actually done this trick, or did he just have an idea in the shower this morning?

I think that one of the key things in the article that people a overlooking is the part about finding someone that you and the candidate know in common. He's not advocating just randomly calling people from the candidates LinkedIn connections, but trying to find someone you both know in common that you could speak to in confidence. My guess is the article got edited down a bit too much and didn't make this key point clear enough.

FWIW to the people who are commenting that they are highly turned off by this tactic... I know Brian Halligan and have worked with him twice (the last time being at HubSpot), he's a very professional and ethical guy overall (IMO) and I don't think he'd recommend doing something that put a candidates current employment in jeopardy. He is also not the only person I know who uses this approach. I've known several people to take this approach, and I've also personally been contacted by people who trust me, in order for those folks to get an unbiased back channel on candidates they were hiring.

This doesn't seem like a very good way to hire a developer to me. Why not actually ask them direct questions to find out if they can code? Why not look at and talk through some code they have written, or even ask them to write some code there and then discuss it?

Why go through all the levels of indirection of a LinkedIn search and then sift through hearsay? Why assume that the one or two people you talk to actually know what they're talking about? You haven't even vetted the candidate, so you're going to put blind faith in the two strangers you find via LinkedIn? What if they are not very good, or have poor judgement, or what if they hate your candidate because he was really good and they weren't (or for any other irrational reason)?

I'm not trying to be rude, and maybe I'm missing something brilliant here ... but I just don't see any "secret sauce" here.

This is interesting, but I keep seeing articles that reduce down to "kiss up to everyone on LinkedIn or your career will suffer".

It is the Orwellian overtones implicit in these kind of glowing references for LinkedIn that I find disturbing.

Oh yes, that and the fact that everyone who seems to be heavily into LinkedIn is a colossal douchebag.

I've worked for the same small cluster of entrepreneurs, who are all very close personal friends, for my entire career. If you cold called people I'm professionally related to, and not on my list of references, then changes are very good that you're calling someone I currently work for or with. And chances are very good that my employer will find out.

Now, I have an excellent relationship with my company's owners and would certainly not get fired for such a thing, but others in my position might. And regardless, that's not information that you have any business giving out to my current employer. That's a discussion that must happen on my terms -- if my boss found out that I was interviewing other companies from your sloppy hiring practices, I would be pissed.

edit: Just realized that if you're going from LinkedIn contacts, you might be calling one of my current clients. That would be absolutely disastrous for myself and my employer -- yeah, go ahead and throw them under the bus by instilling doubt in our customers, thanks.

I'm going with the majority opinion on this.

It's perfectly fine for you to look up my past work relationships for people you know and trust for an objective opinion of my skills - but you damn well better let me know and get my permissions before-hand. I'd like to know whom of my associates you're calling and get their permissions for it beforehand. Skipping this step is just an unbelievable dick move on your part and will make me seriously reconsider working for you.

I'd personally be a bit surprised if a friend who I hadn't listed on a job application was randomly contacted by a potential employer.

Has this happened to any of you? It doesn't seem unethical but is definitely a little sneaky.

What if I don't want word getting around that I'm looking for new work? This seems creepy, especially because I don't really expect that this company would disclose the fact that they are running unsolicited background checks to me.

I once reached out to someone I knew personally who wasn't as a reference, who then told me that it was his understanding that contacting people for references without the permission of your candidate is illegal. (I'm based in Vancouver, BC, Canada) Can anyone with more knowledge comment further?

Best hires: people referred by current (good) employees.

Next best: people with good references.

If you have either of the above, you'd have to really blow the interview. I've never done "blind" reference checks; it's surprising how many employers don't check references at all and base everything on the interview and maybe a few "gotcha" puzzles or coding tests.

I think people should be aware that this goes on, in the form of hiring managers saying "this candidate worked at X, my buddy/coworker/neighbor worked at X, I wonder what their opinion of this candidate is".

I would hope that people who do this only call people they know well and trust to keep the discussion confidential (or at worst, tell the candidate "hey, your prospective employer asked what I thought of you, they must be getting serious about hiring you").

On the other hand, I agree that doing this kind of reference-seeking with total strangers is really creepy, and stupid. If someone I didn't know called me out of the blue this way, I'd definitely tell my friend "your prospective employer called me, did you give my name as a reference?".

Still, the first kind of reference-checking is a good reason to do your best to leave every job on good terms (not just with your boss, but with coworkers as well), if at all possible. You never know who might talk to whom down the road.

I think if the company gives some notice that they're going to do this it might be tolerable but in general it would seem like a huge disincentive to work there. If the employer can't be straightforward with you at the very beginning of your relationship, it's hard to imagine the situation improving with time.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe responding to a guy like this might put your company in legal jeopardy in relation to the former employee.

We have been explicitly told in the past that we cannot discuss former employees' performance with interviewers who call for a reference. We can only state that they were employed with us, and what specific job functions they performed.

Here's the next step in this arms race: cold-call people who know the candidate and then lie about why you're asking. Then you don't necessarily get "caught", and you don't say where you're calling from.

Lies that will potentially work here: "I'm doing a background check for a security clearance". "I'm a private investigator checking out (some other person or company)." "(Person) was supplied as a reference and I'm checking their quality to see how seriously I should take it."

It may be a tough time to be a (real, actual) security clearance background checker in a few years.

The opposite is also quite true: Best way to Vet a company. Find someone who used to work there...

I always get sort of angry about the whole reference thing. It seems that employers are entitled to reference checks but candidates somehow are not allowed to reference check a company?

How many times have you heard the story of someone who got hired into a role to find out on their first day that they are the 4th or so person in that role in 5 months... It's OK for companies to lie, or not fully disclose the truth, but oh boy, if a candidate's reference doesn't check out...

What worries me is that people will see this on the front page, and as many never read the comments here, will think that this is community supported advice.

Luckily the facebook comments on the article are going a similar way as those here, but I wonder is they carry as much weight as the community feeling in this thread?

Hi folks. Sorry I haven't had a chance to respond. I've got some family in town for the holidays and have been tied up.

I stick to the advice in the article. The one thing I didn't mention was that I only do these references if the potential employee is cool with it. I ask the potential employee if I may check blind references and 95% of the time, they are cool with it...this happens toward the end of the process. Sometimes when that employee is not leaving their current employer, they ask me to only reach out to folks from their previous employers which is totally cool w/ me.

Once I get the green light, I go through my LinkedIn and find folks who I know who have worked with the candidate -- Boston's a small town and I don't have to look too far. I reach out and ask them about them. I must say, I do ask some pretty "open" questions and leave the door wide open for someone to say something negative about the person because I don't feel like a get a full picture about the weaknesses from the "given" references.

I totally agree with those who say it is not cool to do this without the employees consent.

I'll give you a case where this worked. Last month, we went through the interview process with someone from Microsoft. The person did well on the interviews (I've noticed that humans are getting better and better at interviews over time) and it was time to do the blind refs. The candidate was fine with us doing them. In this case, they were already out of Microsoft. I happen to know a bunch of folks at Microsoft. I talked to them and they all said the same basic things and were all pretty negative. We ended up passing. Personally, I think we dodged a bullet there.

This method is one I learned from vc's. In our venture rounds, I give them 5-6 references to call for me. They usually call them, but spend the majority of their time calling mutual connections that I didn't provide. Imho, this is smart! ...There was one venture capitalist who I thought went a bit too far. They called everyone they could find that had worked at HubSpot at one time, but no longer did. That's not a long list, so all of those folks were calling me asking, "Are you getting funded by ____."

I guess it's important to be a contrarian in this thread. I am a lawyer (although I acknowledge I have practiced very little in employment law), and to the best of my knowledge and belief, the practice described in the article is legal in the majority of states of the United States and perhaps in plenty of other places. I suppose it's more of a matter of opinion whether asking someone whom you didn't name specifically on your application as a reference is "ethical" or not, but it's simply a matter of fact that your whole reputation in the workplace may be of interest to the next person you work for or work with. AFTER EDIT, ADDITION TO THIS PARAGRAPH: A reply posted as I was replying helpfully refers to a website

http://www.crimcheck.com/resources/job-reference-shield-laws...

that summarizes some tips for employers about what they can say in response to requests for reference checks. The short summary of the various state laws is that employers can tell the truth. No employer may lie, but in general someone who knows you through an employment relationship is permitted to truthfully answer questions about your work, and you have no legal ground to sue the person who answers reference check questions (whose identity, as a practical matter, is likely to remain unknown to you).

I'll give an example of the hiring practice of one large (137 million dollars of revenue per year) organization in my town. The organization, which happens to be my friendly local public school district, has for more than a decade checked out candidates to be district superintendent by having resume-checkers telephone the references listed on the candidates' applications. The reference-checkers follow a protocol developed by a hiring practices consultant to conduct the reference check, and one question on the protocol is "Do you know anyone else who knows this candidate?" That person will be called, and the same question is asked, among all the other reference-checking questions.

The school district chief personnel officer, in a report to the school board just last month, mentioned that now a practice like this is followed for all new hires of teachers in the school district. The goal is to talk to multiple third-order references for each new person hired by the district. Going two degrees of reference out from the original references, and asking the right questions, does a lot to distinguish the best candidates for the job, in the personnel director's opinion. The practice mentioned in the submitted article, where the interviewer uses the candidate's self-disclosed social network information to find second-degree and third-degree references, seems fully legal and similarly likely to turn up more information about a candidate than just contacting the references mentioned by the candidate.

The school district chief personnel officer noted that when teachers are separated from our district's employment for poor performance, it is rare for anyone ever to contact our district even to verify the barest details of the teachers' job performance. So it appears that some organizations still don't check references or employment history at all. That is the organizations' choice, but it should hardly surprise a job candidate that some organizations check work histories very carefully, especially for positions of great responsibility like teaching young people. It is EXPENSIVE to make a hiring mistake for any organization, so quite a lot of time and effort is justified in making hiring decisions carefully.

In an earlier reply in another thread 58 days ago,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3148100

I linked to some external sources about legal reference-checking practices that I'll post here again as information for fellow Hacker News participants:

http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hi...

http://www.drgnyc.com/list_serve/Jan24_2005.htm

http://www.acadweb.wwu.edu/hr/Employment/InfoForHiringOffici...

http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check-questions....

http://www.k-state.edu/hr/employment/referencecheck.htm

http://pbsbo.ucsc.edu/personnel_payroll/staff/recruit/ref_ch...

http://www.bridgestar.org/Library/HiringToolkit/ReferenceChe...

http://jobsearch.about.com/od/referencesrecommendations/a/re...

Great way to staff a project within a firm, but violates the confidence of a job search. The only thing I think that might be ok is asking people within your own firm who know them.

I would like to add my voice to those who have noted that this is in fact poor advice with potential legal consequences. This should not be on the front page.

LinkedIn is not a replacement for common sense.

This is the method the government uses when investigating jobs requiring a security clearance.

FYI.

One way to thwart this: make your LinkedIn connections visible to you alone. http://min.us/mlinkedinconnections (shared connections are not hidden).

See also: how to make sure that someone who had a horrible work environment never, ever, finds a better one.

I am shocked that this isn't standard practice.

Last time I got a job offer, the first thing I did was call up two people who'd sold their companies to that employer, one guy who worked there, one guy who'd quit, and one who'd been offered another job and turned it down. Next time I'll try the "scale of ten" trick, too.

All management positions are to some extent sales positions, and part of a good sales technique is to shape the truth so the good parts are obvious and the bad parts aren't. The more someone's naturally talented at this, the easier it is for them to fudge the truth.

This is much easier to accept if you consider it in the other direction. Would you really think it unethical to do this kind of due diligence on a prospective employer? Would your boss find it creepy? I was open about it.