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Comment by educasean | Hacker News Reader

I spent the last few months interviewing at various bay area startups for senior SE roles. About half of them wanted references. This was my experience so YMMV

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A lot of companies tend to ask for them. No idea how many actually follow through and contact them.

When I was a hiring manager, I found that reference checks were _more_ predictive of eventual performance than the interview cycle was.

After the first time I got burned hiring someone I couldn't get a strong reference for, I got over my laziness and did my job.

How so? I’m never going to give you a reference of someone who isn’t going to say glowing things about me

Seems a bit weird. Unless you're really bad, surely you can round up a few buds who who will say glowing things about you.

2 points:

I've had people not know why I'm reaching out; I've also gotten references selected by the candidate that did not have good things to say. eg "X is difficult to work with."

And most people aren't good impromptu liars. So pushing a bit with a reference on what did you work on together? Why is this person fantastic? Would you hire this person? can get you far. And if the reference has left their shared employment, the classic: why haven't you hired this person?

You’d be surprised by how many people don’t think that through. There are always a surprising number of people apparently just going through the motions.

Truly bad candidates can’t provide references at all, or are entirely oblivious to how poorly they are perceived.

True. In spite of my earlier comment, someone earlier in their career who didn't work out--especially at a smaller company--may have trouble providing a reference. It is also the case that I've seen people get fired who just had no clue that they were obviously unsuited for their job and were totally blindsided.

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