Maybe you’ve seen this happen… After a long and comprehensive search, Person X is hired into a senior leadership role. They have all the necessary skills and experience, and they aced the interview process — everyone loved them!
But once on board, it doesn’t take long for the wheels to start coming off. They are abrasive and non-collaborative. Team members are complaining (and some are leaving), and the results they were hired to deliver are not materializing.
How does this happen? How can a careful, deliberate hiring process, one in which the candidate is so closely evaluated by so many different people, result in such a gigantic miss?
The short answer is there are no guarantees. Hiring involves humans, and the drastically different contexts in which it occurs make the entire process fundamentally subjective and exposed to all kinds of mistakes and biases.
But there is a tool we rely on heavily in our work as recruiters for surfacing these kinds of mismatches well before a final offer is made: reference checks.
I know. People tell me all the time they don’t think referencing is useful.Candidates only offer up people they know are going to say good things, so no new information is provided.
I disagree. Done right, you get a ton of new and useful information, even with references handpicked by the candidate. The secret is knowing how to ask and what to look for. They can’t be perfunctory.
Interviews Are Not Real Life
Interviews are an essential part of any hiring process. But they are artificial by definition. The way somebody shows up in an interview does not correlate in any meaningful way with how they will perform on the job.
Some people, like the person described earlier, are good actors (the real sociopaths are fantastic actors). They learn the material and they have the kind of polish and skill to present in a way that is not reflective of their ability to produce. Absent a reference conversation, this may not come to light until it’s too late.
Of course, it also works the other way — candidates who don’t interview particularly well, but whose references paint a completely different, extremely positive picture of what that person brings to the table.
Referencing Essentials
The primary purpose of reference checking is to close the gap between interview performance and on-the-job reality — to ensure you are getting what you think you are seeing.
Some things worth paying attention to…
#1. Which references are offered?
Your goal is a 360-degree look at the person, based on who they have worked with and for, and who has worked for them. We usually ask for four to six references across these categories.
Then we wait to see how they respond.
Do they provide names from recent roles, or people from a few jobs ago? Are they eager to give you lots of names, or is it hard for them to meet your request? Are the people they offer super-fans (former mentors, loyal lieutenants, etc.), or do they represent a balanced group who can give you a fair account?
Even before talking to any references, who they put on paper is a significant clue.
#2. Can you hear what’s not being said?
When you ask the reference to describe the person, the very first thing they say is incredibly important. Pay close attention. How they start their response is not only highly descriptive of the person, it can also hide who they are NOT. “Brilliant” is a bad sign if you are hiring for a leadership role. “Hard worker.” Also bad.
These types of adjectives are fine when used in the context of more detailed descriptions about leadership, impact, approach, etc. But offered up first and in a self-contained bubble usually means the reference is trying to respond to your question without going into more (negative) detail.
In general, listen for tone, enthusiasm, and specificity of responses. Make sure they are actually answering the questions you ask.
#3. What patterns are you seeing?
As you speak with references, you should start to see versions of the same thing, just seen from different perspectives. It should also match the patterns you have seen during the interview process.
If the responses are all over the map, there is likely a problem. Whose point of view is accurate and why is there so much variation? (Another bad sign.)
If you’re hearing things that did not come through in the interview process, it should be that they are better than you even thought. If it doesn’t feel that way, don’t ignore the flags. That is why you do the references!
#4. How long does it take the references to respond?
We see a strong correlation between how quickly a reference responds to our request to talk and the quality of the candidate. The best candidates tend to have the quickest responding references.
If it takes more than a day or two, or if you need to send more than one message requesting a conversation, there’s almost certainly a reason. If the references are dragging their feet, you’re looking at another red flag.
It’s Always a Conversation
Above all, to get the insights you are looking for, you need to quickly build a relationship with the reference. It’s not an interrogation or a checklist of questions that require answers. It’s a conversation.
So try to connect with the reference on a personal level. The more you build rapport, the more open they will be in helping you understand if the candidate in question is a good fit for the role.
Listen hard to what the person is saying and be ready to dig in where something seems off or where you sense there may be more to uncover. No reference wants to feel they were the reason the candidate didn’t get the job, so be sensitive to that. Saying something like, “I like this person a lot. I’m a bit worried about how they might deal with this situation. How do you feel?” is a gentle way to get to the truth.
A Bad Fit Hurts Everyone
In hiring, the most painful thing is putting someone in a job at which they are going to fail. Nobody wants that.
Hiring is not science, and these are just a few key things to keep in mind as you move through the referencing process (there are many more).
At its best, good hiring is about judgment, based on as much available information as you can get. In that regard, the reference process is critically important in confirming what you think you know about your candidate.
The people who have worked closely and in real-world situations with the candidate are uniquely qualified to give you those insights. Don’t shortchange this step!
