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Reference Check Job Candidates

blog.eladgil.com

25 pointseladgil49 comments

This seems like terrible advice. If someone tried to ask the same question to me about a past colleague multiple times in an attempt to get me to say something bad about them, I'd end the call very quickly.

In fact, the only information I ever give about a past colleague is either that they were great to work with (if their performance was acceptable) or no comment at all (if their performance wasn't). Badmouthing a past colleague is just plain immoral and likely to lead to many closed doors for everyone involved in the future when that past colleague is now heading up a billion dollar company.

You contact references with only one question or you are making a huge mistake. "Did So-and-so work there from X to Y in a position of Z? Was he dismissed for any offense? Thank you for the information, good bye."

I completely agree with you. In fact, in certain states/cities, there are legal ramifications for calling businesses or references asking anything outside the realm of 'Did they work there, yes or no?'

In fact, in many industries, the most that HR people (and sometimes employees) are allowed to say is the employment start and end dates

It seems so strange to me. We share the articles we read, we comment all over the internet (sometimes using our real names), we share and publicize our code on Github, send tweets into the eternal ether, post pictures of us and our families -- but ask someone I worked with what they think of me and OMG THAT'S SO TERRIBLE, IMMORAL, AND POSSIBLY ILLEGAL.

The dichotomy blows my mind. You should be proud of your career and the impact you've made.

Lemme explain why it matters:

Suppose we were coworkers, and you found out that I was entertaining a job offer with another company. How would you react? Would you be asking me to do more work (knowing that I might not be there soon)? No, most likely you would try to wind down any work we were mutually involved with, in anticipation of my announcement.

Take it to the next level. If my boss found out I was looking for a new job, I'd be on very thin ice. The boss wouldn't entrust me with any long-term or cool project, nor would he give me a promotion unless there was a strong sense that he could retain me by giving a promotion. And even if I did stay on, it would still nag at the boss and would forever tarnish the working relationship.

The problem isn't the actual opinion. It's really the ramifications of others knowing you are looking for a job. And that's something I do care about, regardless of how proud I am of my career. (and for the record, I am proud of my accomplishments :)

The dichotomy blows my mind. You should be proud of your career and the impact you've made.

If you've done anything worth being proud of, then it's likely that some people will hate your guts and want to sabotage you-- and powerful people are more likely than average to dislike you.

A roulette game in one's career (back-channel references) that one didn't ask for is undesirable to anyone.

Let's suppose I was a super programmer that made the company millions, but I also slept with the boss's girlfriend.

If someone asks the boss for a reference, what do you think will motivate the boss more? The million of dollars or the fact I slept with his girlfriend?

This is exaggerated of course, but it isn't uncommon, specially at large companies, to be a good professional, but have personal issues with some of the people there.

"The dichotomy blows my mind. You should be proud of your career and the impact you've made."

"but I also slept with the boss's girlfriend."

Strictly speaking, this is an example of an impact that you probably shouldn't be proud of.

Strictly speaking, this is an example of an impact that you probably shouldn't be proud of.

Excellent point. Character matters. Ethics matter. A lot. If someone makes millions of dollars but is still doing bad things, that's not a person to be in business with.

The problem with workplace character metrics (e.g. reference checks) is that they do a poor job of measuring it, getting caught on superficial stuff.

The money, easily. Have you not been around people for long?

It's not a dichotomy. It's risk aversion. When we share/publicize our work and ideas, we have control over what people see/hear. When it comes to references, we do not have control. One bad reference (from a spiteful co-worker, a bad manager, or anything else we're trying to leave behind us) can ruin a job opportunity, or even a career.

A corollary is that people approaching references as an opportunity to get answers to questions they missed in the interview will flag false alarms because busy involuntary referees decide they don't want to list specific examples of where Candidate X was unusually productive, or have no idea whether X was in the top 3 or top hundred team members they've ever worked with for accurate record-keeping.

As a manager at Microsoft, I wasn't allowed to answer anything further than confirming or denying employment. I don't believe I was even allowed to confirm/deny offense-based dismissal.

I do agree that a reference call can be very valuable, but up to 15 minute calls? When you call a reference you are essentially making someone do a favor for someone else, which is fine because the candidate asked for that favor. But I also think it's proper to keep it short and simple so you don't impose too much. It's your job to vet the candidate, not theirs. I used to use a high-level senior VP above me as a reference, and 15 minutes of his time was worth a lot - probably on the order of 50 dollars based on his compensation.

>If possible, find people who have worked with the candidate that the candidate did not suggest you talk to.

NO. This is beyond imposing, it is dangerous and unethical. People talk, gossip travels, and some companies consider employees leaving a very sensitive manner. If I found out a future employer did this to me I would consider retracting my application, even if I had already accepted an offer.

Maybe it depends on the industry. But I worked in a field where everyone knew everybody if you'd been around for a few years. So it was an absolute no-brainer to look up who you knew at the companies the candidate worked, pick up the phone and ask what's the word on the street about this guy. And the guy I was calling would typically consider it a favor to me, not to the hire. In fact, failing to call, or to have a network of people who could help on hiring references, purchase references, occasional technical and best-practice questions, would be failing networking 101 and the real no-no at that level. Of course, this would be when an offer was about to be made, and not to anyone who wasn't supposed to know about the hire, or whose discretion couldn't be relied on, and just 1-2 people.

Of course, randomly contacting a bunch of people via LinkedIn would have been bad judgment and a reason for the candidate to question working for someone who would risk putting them in an embarrassing spot.

Also, I don't really agree with the most direct in-your-face questions in the post unless you know the reference really well. If I was the reference those questions would make me uncomfortable and I would shut down the call pretty quick. Would almost make me think the candidate had a buddy testing me for what type of reference I was giving, which is not totally unheard of.

Also, my experience is the check is mostly to check for the red flag, make sure their description of role was accurate, maybe confirm/fill in a gap about something you might not get the full story about from the applicant, how much were they really involved in X, circumstances of departure, basic strengths, weaknesses, would you hire again. If you can't do the technical / cultural fit yourself you're gonna have a bad time.

Other than that, I'm surprised at the pushback... for the most part this is the way it's done.

References are not an opportunity to engage in "networking 101." The advice recommended in the post belies a poor screening and interviewing technique.

Sorry if I was unclear. I did not mean it was an opportunity to build a network. I meant, at least where I was, if you were a hiring manager and didn't have the ability to tap your network and check through a back channel if someone in the industry was legit, and take advantage of it, you weren't really doing your job.

Legit-ness should be sorted out WAY before references are checked.

For the record, the fastest way to burn a bridge with me would be to find random people at my last/current company I didn't give you permission to talk to, and go out and talk to them.

If I find out a person at a company I am supposed to work for does this, I won't say anything, I just wouldn't show up my first day or any day in the future.

All relationships start with trust, and while I understand you are trying to protect your business, you are also putting candidates at personal risk while lowering the value of their network.

References are challenging, and I don't plan on relying on them any more than making sure a person can come up with 3 or 4 people that will say something positive about them. I don't care if they are not telling the truth, but it is nice to know that the entire world doesn't hate them.

*In most cases, I have strong bonds with people I currently and previously worked for, and I am highly likely to get an email if you reach out to them. If they don't send me an email, I didn't know them and you won't get good information.

If someone ever calls me and does this, I will first lie to them, then second I will pick up the phone and call the person who they are trying to get references for.

"All relationships start with trust, and while I understand you are trying to protect your business, you are also putting candidates at personal risk while lowering the value of their network."

Absolutely. Trust is a two-way street, and you don't want that candidate to be blabbing to competitors.

This is the piece of "advice" which jumped out at me as being completely horrible.

What if the job search is going out without informing EVERYONE at the prospect's company? What if the prospect hasn't informed his boss that he is looking yet? There is a real chance that talking to some random person at candidate's current job could put their current position in jeopardy. You could also happen to ring up some vindictive asshole who just wants to sabotage the prospect's chances.

These are all wonderful suggestions, but personal experience in the US and dealing primarily with candidates from medium to large companies is that reference checks get referred to HR, and the policy is to confirm dates of employment and positions only. Too much litigation risk in the US to say much more.

Yes, the possibility of libel without burden of proof or ratification by the applicant.

So that's the situation for the US - i wonder how other parts of the world think about that practice, let alone if it's allowed by the law? Is there a list somewhere?

This advise seems like it's suited for the business world and not well placed here.

In the tech/startup world, I would advise against doing this sort of in-depth questioning of references. Really, most of these checks are going to be done by your HR team/recruiter and all they're really trying to establish is that they are who they say they are. They're not trying to establish how awesome the candidate is.

The "awesomeness" part is something you need to establish through the rest of the process:

* interviews with the hiring manager and team

* code samples via Github or some other project

* a coding challenge that is reviewed by several people

There are some other things you can do. I for one am a proponent of the "social interview" idea. I like to have candidates come over for some part of the event where they aren't sitting in a conference room and you aren't asking them technical questions. See if you can have a conversation with her, figure out if he's friendly and interesting, decide if you're willing to spend the next two years "in the trenches" with this person.

So you're saying that in the startup world, where companies are smaller and each employee matters more, companies should do less work when trying to validate candidates before making offers?

I believe he's proposing that startups do more effective validation of candidates, not less work.

The information reported by references (or cold calls) can be vague, misleading, and limited by anti-defamation policies.

On the other hand, information gathered from their publicly shared code, interviews, hanging out, pairing, coding problems, etc. is much more relevant to your question. Will this person fit our startup?

He's saying that a particular avenue of information gathering shouldn't be used at all. That's doing less!

Elad is saying that all of those things (interviews, hanging out, looking at shared code, etc etc) should be done and ALSO reference checks should be done.

And of course the information from references can sometimes be vague and misleading. All information about candidates can be vague and misleading. It's the job of a good hiring manager to sort through all of this information and do they best that can to form a complete picture. The more information the better!

If I ever found out a potential hiring company went around my list of approved references to find other opinions I would immediately cease negotiations and start warning colleagues about that company.

It's rude. It's invasive. If you are incapable of determining if the person sitting infront of you is a fit for your organization without serious spy work, you shouldn't be sitting in the hiring chair.

References are doing a favor for the applicant. To cold call people randomly trying to dig up dirt is sad and pathetic.

I still haven't figured out how to find references who might not accidentally leak the fact that I'm looking elsewhere to the whole office.

I tend to end up putting people from jobs previous to the current one to avoid this, which probably makes the whole process somewhat pointless.

It's all part of the picture when it comes to explaining why the hiring and job search process itself is more of a problem than the availability of hires.

I once received a reference-verification call for a previous coworker and friend which started to go in the direction of asking for more than confirmation of employment and general pleasantness to work with, and I wrapped it up as soon as possible with the old "hard stop." It's not my job to pause my actual work to sell you on a candidate. A job reference is not analogous to a letter of recommendation. If my previous coworker was a colossal jerk, I might say, "Hmm, I'm not really sure about that, it was a while ago," and that's it.

This is, as the comments suggest, a touchy subject. I generally advise people to never respond to reference check requests with anything other than confirming they were employed.

There is a risk that a bad reference will get you sued by the candidate, and a good reference (where the candidate doesn't work out) gets you sued by the company. Its a lose-lose situation.

That said, one of the really interesting things about the San Francisco Bay area is that there is relatively high job mobility. So a lot of job motion (or not) is from other employees who refer their friends, or suggest that the company pass. Once someone has gone through one of the 'grinders'[1] they get some visibility to other people who worked with them or was aware of them. In my own experience I've met people who I won't work with ever again. And people whom I would work with in a heartbeat. And a bunch of people in between. I'm sure that I land somewhere on that spectrum for a bunch of people in the valley as well.

It is more effective to look and see where a person has been hired and stayed vs hired and bounced out again, to get an understanding of how they fit in or didn't. And if they followed folks from previous jobs or sought out new folks. Was their mobility increasing? (if so they are probably pretty good) or decreasing? (then you might want to probe that, with the candidate)

At the end of the day, digging up gossip on someone by seeking out back channels cannot get you useful data on the candidate.

[1] A 'grinder' is a large 10,000+ employee tech company which is constantly consuming new hires to fill roles due to a relatively high rate of turnover. Examples have been HP, Apple, Google, Sun, Xerox, Cisco, Etc.

"a good reference (where the candidate doesn't work out) gets you sued by the company"

Really? Has this ever happened with the plaintiff ending up winning in court?

FYI the word is "discreet" not "discrete"

I find that practice (trying to find someone else to give a reference) to be deplorable. Suppose you do talk to a current coworker. If the candidate ultimately doesn't join your company, you've basically messed up future relations between the candidate and the coworker (and possibly the boss -- don't assume that the coworker will remain hush-hush).

This is pretty bad advice, sorry.

> If possible, find people who have worked with the candidate that the candidate did not suggest you talk to. You need to do this discretely - e.g. don't call their current boss to ask how good they are thereby screwing over the candidate, or alternatively causing their existing employer to make a big counter offer.

You are not doing a security clearance background check on your future employee. It's one thing if your friend bill worked at company X and you casually ask him about bob when you have a chance encounter one day.

But it's completely unacceptable to engage in this kind of espionage. The reason is that the candidate has not been informed of it, plain and simple. What you're advocating is tantamount to spying. This person might not think it's worth you digging through the coffers of his past just to work at your company. Did you ever stop to think that?

Wouldn't it be easier just to ask for their Facebook password?

If a recruiter were to read this article and do something like this to me, I would be totally pissed.

If I were to find out that a recruiter took the time to find extra references by rummaging around my social networks and calling people I didn't mention, I would feel some serious serious mistrust. This is the kind of thing that would actually make me reject an offer from a company.

If you have found that this technique actually works for you, then what you are actually discovering in reality is that you probably: 1) Have an inadequate technical interview process. 2) Have inadequate tech recruiters.

"If possible, find people who have worked with the candidate that the candidate did not suggest you talk to."

Would be nice if the article suggested how you go about finding these people in a fair and responsible way.

Private Eye. I hear Jack Nicholson's real good.

Thanks for the feedback on this. I just added an update.

5 references seems a bit overbearing...

This is just plain bad advice.

This is good advice, and the first comments don't do this helpful article justice. I have just been reading about reference checks in standard reference books about hiring (as part of updating my differing FAQ about hiring procedures before I post it to my personal website), so I can vouch for the correctness and helpfulness of what is said in the submitted article. The procedures mentioned are legal, and you are a chump if you don't use them.

Recycling some electrons, here is an adaptation of a comment I made on Hacker News about a year ago:

There is an art to checking references. Even if a company has a policy of giving bare minimum information, find out a TELEPHONE NUMBER of someone in that company who knows your candidate and start a conversation. I was given a specific script of questions to ask back in the 1990s when I was a community volunteer for my local public school district, doing reference checks on superintendent candidates. A consultant advised the school district (and through the district, me) on how to do this. If you talk to someone directly by voice, and have a good list of specific questions to ask about the candidate, you will be AMAZED at what people say, policy or no policy. Company policies don't keep people from sharing stories with curious listeners. The key is to learn what questions are legal to ask and reveal the most interesting stories about the person you are thinking of hiring. There are consultants who can advise you about checking references, and, as people who have had actual hiring authority for important jobs will say, checking references is a lot less expensive than making a wrong hiring decision. Once you've learned the questions, you know what to ask.

I've just asked my consultant Google, and he suggests several sets of useful questions to ask when checking references:

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.bridgespan.org/Publications-and-Tools/Hiring-Nonp...

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

AFTER EDIT: My comment on the initial response to this comment of mine is that I am on record

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5227923

as saying here on HN that if you want to hire a good worker, you should give the job applicant a work-sample test. Research tells us that, and wishful thinking can't make that untrue.

But if you are relying on anything said implicitly by someone's references to decide whom to hire, you had better check the references. People lie on their reference lists. They do that a lot in industries where the custom is not to check references. (We have read some stories about that here on HN over the years.) If your work-sample procedure for hiring is airtight enough, checking references may not add much to your hiring procedure, but it is legally safer to check references (to avoid employer legal exposure for negligent hiring) than to not check references. You prove you are a gentleman and a good sport by letting the honest people be discovered as honest when you check their references. Engaging in wishful thinking on this issue protects you neither legally nor practically.

Even if a company has a policy of giving bare minimum information, find out a TELEPHONE NUMBER of someone in that company who knows your candidate and start a conversation.

So, now you're going to get someone who is dumb enough to respond to what could conceivably be a social engineering call, and asking them for personal information about a third party.

I can see no way that this will end up with useful and/or actionable information.

I can see no way that this will end up with useful and/or actionable information.

You haven't actually done this. As I mentioned in my parent comment to your comment, I actually have. That was very helpful to the public school district where I was serving as a community volunteer for knowing which superintendent candidate to hire. By the way, the personnel director of our public school district reported to the school board last year that when teachers leave the employment of the district, he almost NEVER hears reference check telephone calls, which he would be happy to answer, from any subsequent employer of those teachers. He thinks that is seriously weird. Don't people want to be careful when they hire teachers of young children?

Yes, that's why they have criminal background checks performed and are licensed by the state.

The risk of a defamation lawsuit is a very serious and real thing.

>The craziest set of downvotes I've ever seen on a comment of mine are here

Haha, it didn't take very long to make that into your profile. I'm sorry you are getting downvoted and I upvoted you to make up for it, but I would strongly advise you to not cold call people from a company about the candidate. An employee at my last company almost got fired when they found out he was looking elsewhere. It was terrible of the company, but they needed someone stable in his position for a long project. He was on a visa, and he told me he could have been deported before he had a chance to accept another offer if he had been fired.

I'd flag this, but the OP is getting lots of deserved hate and that would stop the pile-on process, so I won't.

Thanks, HN.

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