Reference check

The questions, and how to read the answer

Eight questions, twenty minutes, on a call rather than by email. Written references are drafted by the candidate more often than anybody admits, and almost none of the signal is in the words. It is in the pauses, the qualifications, and what gets volunteered after the question has been answered.

Who to ask for, and what to do about a curated list

Every candidate hands you a list of people who will say good things. That is not dishonesty, it is what the request invites. The job is to get one step past the list without going behind the candidate’s back.

• Ask by role rather than by name. "The person you reported to on the project you described" is much harder to substitute than "two references".
• Ask each reference who else saw the work closely, then ask the candidate to introduce you. Done openly this is not a back-channel, and people who are comfortable with their work are usually comfortable with the request.
• A peer reference and a manager reference answer different questions. A peer knows what it was like to depend on them. A manager knows what it took to get their best work.
• A reference from the current employer is usually unavailable for good reasons. Do not read the absence as a signal, and do not accept it as a reason to skip the ones that are available.
• If every reference offered is from more than three years ago, ask about the gap plainly. There is usually a straightforward answer, and occasionally there is not.

When to run them

Run references before the offer wherever your process allows it. A reference call made after the offer is out has almost no ability to change anything, because by then the team has committed, the candidate has resigned in their head, and a mildly concerning call gets rationalised rather than acted on.

• Before the offer: the check can change the decision, which is the only reason to run it.
• After the offer, with the offer conditional in writing: acceptable where a candidate cannot expose a search, and only if you are genuinely prepared to withdraw.
• After joining: a courtesy call rather than a check, because no decision is attached to it any more.
• Never call somebody at the candidate’s current employer without explicit permission. It is the fastest way to cost a person their job and your company its name in that market.

Reading a reference call

• Score the reference before you score the candidate. Somebody who cannot describe the work is telling you nothing, positively or negatively.
• The pause before an answer carries more than the answer. Managers who rate somebody highly say so immediately.
• Superlatives with no particulars usually mean the relationship was good and the working relationship was thin.
• Take the volunteered addendum seriously. The sentence beginning "the only thing I would say" is the reason the call was worth making.
• One weak reference is data. Two weak references on the same theme is a decision, and the theme is what you take to the third.

What a reference cannot settle

• Whether they can do a job they have not done. A reference reports on the last role, and the risk in most hires is the delta between that role and yours.
• Whether they will accept and join. That gets settled in the interview, by asking who else has a say and what would make them say no.
• Facts. Dates, titles and qualifications belong in background verification, which is a different instrument with a different failure mode.
• Anything you did not ask about. References answer the question asked, narrowly, and almost never volunteer the thing you most needed unless you left silence for it.

References and the offer that does not hold

A reference will not tell you whether somebody will join. What it does is surface the conditions this person needs in order to work well, which is exactly what makes an offer conversation specific rather than generic. Specific offers hold better than generous ones, and the gap between an accepted offer and a person at a desk is where most hiring plans quietly fail.