The Underused Hiring Skill That Could Be Your Advantage
- 11 hours ago
- 5 min read
TL; DR
Most managers barely check references, often because they don’t think they can get them. But they can, and you should.
Don’t let candidates choose their own references. Require a list of every prior supervisor
going back 15 years.
Referrers want to be positive. The right questions make it psychologically difficult for them to hide weaknesses.
The highest-value tactic: ask the referrer to rank the candidate against others they’ve managed in the same role. Glowing reviews often collapse under this one.
I thought she was a great hire. Her resume sparkled and she impressed everyone who
interviewed her. Her former co-worker gushed about her. But soon after onboarding it
became clear that though her performance was good we absolutely could not trust her.
Within six months she was gone. Soon afterward, I ran into a colleague who had
worked with her years ago. The same problem had surfaced at his company, with the
same outcome.
That made me feel stupid. Why hadn’t I uncovered this during the hiring process? The
short answer: weak reference checking. I really hate feeling stupid, so I resolved to
improve my skills.
In more than three decades of running companies and nonprofits and overseeing
hundreds of employees, I doubt I was called as a reference 10 times. Other managers
tell me that this is because most people aren’t allowed by their companies to provide
references. Yet in the hundreds of reference calls I made in my career, the number of
times I got that response was zero.
I check references consistently and assertively. I push the referrer hard to get the most
accurate picture. After one CEO provided a reference he asked, “Can I hire you to
check references for me?” But my approach isn’t magic – it’s just a well-honed process.
Here’s how I do it.
Don’t let the candidate pick the references. Candidates obviously will select colleagues who will praise them. I want to talk to people responsible for their performance – their supervisors. Prior to the final interview, we send candidates a form that asks for names of their prior supervisors for every job on their resume. I don’t want to talk with colleagues, advisors, or direct reports; these can be cherry-picked and won’t necessarily have had visibility into performance criteria. We’ll attempt to check references with every prior manager, or at least those going back 15 years.
Ask permission before contacting each reference and explore any reluctance. We expect candidates to grant permission for all others. If not, we dig deep on why. Most of the time I’m able to persuade the candidate to allow me to talk to the person. Never has their concern turned out to be a problem during the call and usually the reference is good. Sometimes the candidate has a strong reason (e.g., they haven’t told their current boss that they’re looking) and that’s OK. If there’s more than one former boss they don’t want us to contact, we don’t hire them.
Have the candidate contact the references before you call. This likely was the basis for my perfect record in never being turned down. The candidate gives permission for my call and communicates that refusal will imply that the reference will be negative. Candidates often protest that they lack the contact information but they find it in 90%+ of the situations. In most of the others we can find it, which tells us something about the candidate’s resourcefulness (or lack of it) – also useful information.
Use a consistent approach. We always use the same form for each candidate for the same role. See an example here. Create your own form to assess the attributes most important to you and your organization.
Build up to the toughest questions. I warm up asking about facts, build trust as the questions get harder, and eventually get to assessments that separate out the best candidates.
Use facts and comparators to generate candor. A key truth: Referrers want to speak well of candidates and will do whatever they can to avoid damaging comments. This means you will easily get all the positives but need to spend most of your energy looking for weaknesses. Some questions I use for this include:
Did you give a formal performance review? What score did you give? Make sure you fully understand the rating system and the context of the candidate’s score.
How many others have you worked with in this role? Rank the candidate within that set. This is the highest-value question I ask. If the candidate is one of 10 the boss has worked with in that position it is psychologically difficult to claim the candidate was one of the best if it’s not true. I’ve had many glowing reviews of candidates who are rated in the bottom third of their set when I ask this question.
What would you change and what’s the best opportunity for professional growth? Here I push for something substantial. It’s easier for a referrer to talk about what they’d like the candidate to add than it is to criticize.
Ask if they would re-hire. They nearly always say yes, sometimes with qualifications, but it’s a crucial question and I often learn more than I expect.
Ask why they left the organization. I always ask this in the interview and want to see if the supervisor has the same response. You learn a great deal about a candidate’s character by understanding how and why they exit relationships.
Have the courage to ask for uncomfortable details. Better a hard reference check than a bad hire. One candidate told me she left her prior job because all six staff in her position were laid off. Her prior boss confirmed this. I asked if all six were laid off at once. He said no, there had been three rounds – two layoffs in each. I pressed him and learned that my candidate was laid off in the first round, based on performance. It was only through this uncomfortable exchange that I learned she was rated in the bottom third of the group.
Learn from the supervisor’s experience. By asking, “What’s the best way to manage this person?” you’ll gain additional insight not only into performance but into getting the best from the candidate. You also may learn something about the way the manager thinks, which can provide context for the prior comments.
This system has served me well ever since I hired that sparkling candidate who failed
utterly. If you hate feeling stupid as much as I do, get great at checking references.
Try This Week:
Pick three questions from the sample form and build them into a one-page reference checking guide for your next hire.
Going forward, ask finalists to list their past several supervisors and get permission to contact them.
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