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Yet companies still ask for references from supervisors, even companies that have this very policy in place.

That's because, as far as I know, a supervisor won't get in trouble for saying "Jim was the brightest employee I've ever had, which we could have kept him". And by referring the caller to HR, that is a closet way of giving a negative reference.

And if the former supervisor has an axe to grind his implicit negative reference doesn't mean much.

Add to that the fact that employees carefully cultivate positive references and you have just one more reason why references are a poor indicator of basically anything.

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