The request for references is so common place, I think very few people give it much thought. With a little reflection, you may realize references don’t get you much, if any, valuable information. I tend to feel that contacting references is, in many circumstances, a bit silly and maybe a waste of time. However, never fear, I will still provide a few tips on asking for references.
What is your goal?
I would guess your hope is to get an honest, unfiltered, non-curated, candid, frank, etc. assessment of the candidate’s work and their personality.
If that’s your goal, I doubt it will be met. Like social media posts, references are curated so as to ensure the rosiest picture possible. Part of asking someone to be your reference is determining whether they have good things to say about you and are comfortable doing so. Indeed, as a job candidate you’re looking for people who are going to sing your praises.
Surprisingly, sometimes people can also get awesome references from people who wish them gone. Why? Because they wish them gone! Consider the statement, “I can’t more highly recommend this person.” Sounds good. But, what does it actually tell you? In fact, there’s been no recommendation at all.
Sometimes people are afraid to say anything less than positive for fear of litigation.
Finally, people generally are kind. (Okay not always. Sometimes people are spiteful but really there are a lot of generous people out there.) They realize work environments can be tough and even though perhaps this person was not their favorite coworker or supervisee, still they did good work and will do good work elsewhere. Maybe they even have regrets about how they or the organization treated them. So they give a good reference, focused on the positive.
A reference tells you a lot about the person providing it.
This leads me to a main point about the information provided by references. A reference tells you just as much, likely more, about the person providing the reference than the person they are speaking about.
Any student of human nature, psychology, literature, history, anthropology, will be familiar with this general idea. When people open their mouths and out tumble words, books, monographs, songs, etc. about other people, what they’re primarily sharing is their interpretation/experience of the other person.
No I am not going to go down the epistemological rabbit hole of whether we can really ever know anything about other people or the world. I believe the answer is a resounding yes. I just think that this can be true while it is also true that when we describe someone else’s attributes, skills, personality, by definition, we’re basing it on our experiences of them and therefore our descriptions tell you A LOT about us and not so much about the other person.
When you know the person providing the reference and thus know something about their values, biases, approach to the world, you may have some idea about how to interpret what they’ve said, including which things they said should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Many times, a prospective employer doesn’t know the person providing the reference so they are even less equipped to interpret the provided information.
Bias in references
Now that we’ve established that references tell you a lot about the person providing a reference and, if you’re lucky, a tiny something about your job candidate, we’re ready to talk about bias.
Do I even need to spell out how, if you’re from a marginalized community, you’re coworkers and supervisors, especially if they are not from that marginalized community, are likely to have stereotypes and prejudices that play into their experiences about you and that then show up in what they think and may eventually say about you, if called upon to provide a reference?
If I do, let me know. Right now it feels to painful to actually put into digital format these hurtful stereotypes and the way they play out in evaluations of others.
Pro Tip – Stereotypes, prejudice, and bias particularly show up in personality and character assessments. If you’re going to ask references questions, stay away from questions that ask them to evaluate someone’s personality or character. And remember that those biases are going to creep into answers to even seemingly innocuous questions such as, “How did the person meet deadlines.”
A lack of references
While a lack of references definitely says something, often it says less about the candidate’s potential and more about life circumstances beyond the candidate’s control.
Per above, a person may be from a marginalized community. Their workplace may have been so little diverse or inclusive and so incredibly biased in its culture, that there are few people who are able to provide them an unbiased reference.
A person may have been out of the workforce for some time for their own health reasons, for care-taking responsibilities, or maybe just because they could afford to and there was something else they wanted to accomplish.
A person may essentially have had a job that involved working alone. They got work done but no one worked closely with them. People were by and large pleased with the results but there just isn’t anyone who can provide much detail.
And when it comes to supervisory references, people may have had hostile, absent, and/or terrible supervisors. They may have had supervisors who feel it is helpful to “grade” their employers on a harder curve than other supervisors do. They may have had supervisors who left suddenly for another country. They may have had supervisors who were fired. (If you get the idea I am not making these scenarios up, you’re right!)
References, are they even necessary?
Even supervisors with a track record of destroying people and programs and on the run from a tsunami of complaints, can generate a list of good references!
Like I said, if your goal is to get a candid assessment, chances are you won’t get it from a reference.
If on the other hand, your goal is more modest and you simply want to determine whether the candidate is a breathing, living human being who can organize themselves, interact decently with others, and get some work done, then their application, ability to show up at an interview and perform, and their responses to any follow-up requests you have is arguably more informative than references.
I am guessing most employers are thinking to themselves: Yes, I agree the application and interview process say more than references do about a candidate’s qualifications. But a reference will tell us something and allow us to pick from the handful of finalists.
I agree, it is a way to pick your finalist. However, for the reasons above, I am not sure it is the most fact-based and non-biased way to pick your finalist. But…
I know, you’re going to ask for references anyways.
It’s just too scary to offer someone a job solely on the basis of an excellent application and interview(s).
Tips for reference requests
Don’t require supervisory references – This will unnecessarily screen out people whose past supervisors are out of the country, hostile, fired, retired, and so on…. More job candidates are impacted by this then you may realize.
Respect references’ time and energy – Providing a reference takes time. It also often takes emotional labor because, again most people are kind, they want to accommodate the prospective employer’s needs and they want the candidate in question to do well.
Ask yourself if the information needed to make your decision is information you can get elsewise. If the answer is yes, don’t contact the references.
For example, if your decision comes down to assessing which of your finalists has the most multilingual skills, you don’t need to contact their references!
If you still feel you need to call references, self-reflect. You have a handful of finalists. What information can a reference provide that really and truly is necessary to your decision-making? If you can’t answer that question, don’t contact references.
Given the inherent bias and limited information references can provide, how will contacting references help you make a fact-based, non-biased decision? And, if you contact references what guardrails will you have in place to ensure the least bias?
Do not ask references to write answers to your questions. Writing takes far more time and focus than a conversation. The references don’t work for you and neither does the candidate, at least not yet. Make it easy for references to give you the information you want.
Make sure you have a way for the reference to leave you a message. If you call a reference and leave voicemail, give them some times they can successfully reach you.
Pro-Tip – If your voicemail is full, clear it before leaving a message for a reference. Or give them another, easy way to reach you.
Don’t ask twenty questions. I was once asked to provide written answers to oh so many questions. No reference should ever have to do that, in writing or verbally, even for a super fancy job which this wasn’t. If you insist on asking that many questions, pay the reference!
Seriously, you should be able get the information you need from a few questions. If you feel that you can’t, you’re probably expecting the information provided by a reference to do more work than it can. And/or you may not have thought enough about what information you actually need.
Yes, I provided the reference. As per above discussion, this was someone I cared about and I wanted the best for her. But yes, I was also super irritated at that prospective employer, naturally.
If you have trouble reaching a reference let the candidate know. People are very busy these days. They are also inundated by phone calls, text messages, and emails. Often people don’t listen to their voicemail if it comes from an unknown number. Sometimes people are out of range on a camping trip or in a city on another continent.
Don’t assume the lack of response from the reference has anything to do with the job candidate. Instead, tell the candidate and let them track down their reference for you and/or offer you a different reference.
If you pause momentarily at the thought of this level of communication and transparency with a candidate, ask yourself why. It’s a little more work, but they are one of your finalists and you feel the information a reference could provide is valuable. Isn’t that tiny extra step worth it?
Since I have been in this very situation only to find out later I didn’t get the job because they couldn’t reach one of my references but never let me know, I’ve had to wonder if there is more at play than just the extra step of communicating with me. I’ve wondered if the prospective employer is somehow worried that the candidate contacting the reference will introduce bias or partiality by the candidate “priming” the reference. If that’s the worry, it’s silly. First, candidates can always contact their references. In fact, many references ask to be alerted if a reference call is expected. Second, if the reference is a work reference as opposed to a best friend, then the candidate likely doesn’t know when they’re off camping or that they don’t listen to voicemail or….
Or, maybe they’re worried that the candidate completely made up the references and these people don’t exist? Again, if you’ve contacted a couple of references successfully but are having trouble reaching one or two, more likely they’re a real person, maybe out camping, maybe on another continent, or maybe ignoring the phone call because they don’t recognize the number.
Contacting references should be a final step. Don’t contact references before an interview or between interviews. You’re only going to offer the job to one person. Everyone else is going to have to keep looking and with any luck, they’ll eventually be a finalist and their references will get a call. And, if that employer is using references to pick between finalists, then they may end up calling someone’s references only to offer the job to someone else. That is, in the process of a job search, someone’s references may get contacted by several employers before the person lands a job. This is all the more true for folks who face discrimination in the hiring process, e.g., are older, don’t fit society’s standards of beauty, etc.
Call only your top finalist’s references. Your first impulse may be to call all the finalists’ references. For the reasons above, please don’t. Instead, use the information you have to choose your top choice, then call only their references. If the references are decent, resist the urge to call others’ references. Just offer the top candidate job.
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