Reference Checking - The Stag Who Got Away

I attended a friends stag do on Saturday. The day had been rolling along quite nicely and we had been very gracious and polite to the fella. He seemed to be enjoying himself, and even appeared rather high spirited after being pelted with paint balls for his sins by the rest of us lads. Things were just starting to heat up as we visited a couple of bars in the city, but then the evening hit an all time low as the sneaky and cunning little man somehow managed to escape his own stag do. It was too late for us; by the time we realised he was gone, he had slid unnoticed out of the pub and moved swiftly to a taxi stand before making his get away.

This situation got me thinking about the importance of reference checking. As a boss how can you feel confident that your new hire won't be a quitter? How can you ensure they will have stick-ability and the mental fortitude to keep going even when faced with adversity and challenging situations? Or like the rest of the stag party, will you be left feeling let down and abandoned by somebody who you thought you had a good measure on? Will you need to stand over them and watch their every move?

Perhaps we could have done a little more homework on our friend before letting him out of our sight. We perhaps should have considered past examples of his shifty behaviour before giving him our trust that day. Perhaps he could have provided us with some referees.

Here are some tips to help you when it comes to verifying psychometric assessment, interview and CV findings with a candidate's referees:

Checking with the Referee
• Carefully prepare the list of questions you are going to ask. While you will also need to ask follow up questions based the referee's responses, prior question planning is essential for successful reference checking.
• Base your questions on the job relevant information (duties, role competencies, etc) collected from the psychometric assessments, CV, job application form and interview.
• Ask behavioural descriptive questions or questions about how the person has responded in past situations.
• Ask for examples to back up statements that the referee makes. Delve further into their descriptions and try to get a feel for their personal grading system.
• Check to see that the referee actually worked with the candidate and is a credible source.

So while this one got away fairly lightly, next time we will be more studious and make sure we know who we are dealing with and the kind of behaviour to expect.