Why You Should Never Call A Reference

Standard practice in reference checking usually looks something like this: you’ve interviewed the candidate a couple of times, and they’ve made it to reference checking stage; they have provided you with 2 references and you cold call these references. Half the time, it may feel like you are an inconvenience to these references but some boxes are ticked and that’s the end of the reference checking. But in our experience, to be really effective in reference checking and find out what the candidate is really like, The candidate must get their references to ring you.

You want to ensure you are hiring A players or as Jim Collins says “getting the right person on the bus.” But how do you know whether you are being fooled during the application process? Some people are very charming and convincing, and it is hard not to like them. In our experience hiring hundreds of people, a vital step in your decision making should be verifying your candidate’s answers and stated experience, and also finding out what their former bosses really think of them, beyond the nice personality.

The cost of getting a hire wrong can be 10X the cost of their salary. You have to pay them that salary, but they underperform and don’t meet sales targets or OKRs, leaving you further away from your company goals. You then have to let them go(and all the mental anguish that goes along with it) and then start the process all over again. On top of this, hiring an ineffective person who doesn’t fit your culture will have a negative impact on the rest of your team. Plus you probably spend more time focusing on them rather than on your A players and the stuff that truly gets you out of bed in the morning.

How To Nail The Reference Check

The candidate must get their references to ring you. By asking the candidate to get their references to ring you, generally speaking people will only make the call if they think highly enough of the individual from the time they worked together. That is the crucial filter for you the person making the hire.

The majority of people who do think highly of the candidate will make the call, because they know that if they don’t, it will probably cost the person the job. If the candidate struggles to get people to call you — alarm bells should be ringing.

Now it is time to really hear how their previous boss rated them. You obviously need to clear the basics, dates and years etc but the key is getting the reference to verify everything that was stated in the interview process. You will be surprised how many times an 10 month stint in a company gets extended to 18 months in a job interview.

What exactly was Sarah hired to do? Would you say she delivered on this?

Sarah said she was the top performing sales performer in your team — is that correct?

How did Sarah perform in comparison to other people in your team performing the same role?

Sarah said she really loves helping people and cares deeply about clients — Would you say that this is true? Can you give some examples of how she demonstrated this?

This role involves a lot of attention to detail, Sarah said she created a process to eliminate mistakes that some of your team also used — Can you tell me more about this?

None of us are perfect — How would you rate Sarah’s overall performance with you out of 10? (Important — if it’s 7/8/9 press for what exactly the deductions are for as there may be some flaws that have been missed)

If you are satisfied with the feedback and responses, you can be much more confident that you are making the right hire. But it also works for candidates that may not have been blowing you away. For example I have had fairly decent candidates that didn’t seem to be A players. But they got amazing references and guess what — they are still here and they are certainly A players. But I would have missed them without those quality reference checks.

Hire slowly, fire quickly. To give your company the best chance and a team of A players, be rigorous in your reference checking.