In Defense of the Reference

I’ve been in recruiting for 20 years. Both corporate and agency (retained and contingent search) across multiple business applications (hospitality, retail, tech, healthcare, etc.) for Fortune 100 companies and Tech Startups alike. Please allow me to offer a counterpoint to one the keynote speakers at the LinkedIn TalentConnect conference for recruiters last week.

Gary Vaynerchuk sure had the TalentConnect audience whooping and hollering with his high energy presentation. Heck, I wasn’t there, but the video almost had me cheering. But then he ended it by admitting that he’s given some of the best references for some of the worst employees who have ever worked for him. (Laughs/cheers/applause!)

Huh? Wait a second. I had to replay the talk.               

He said he has called “Zero-point-Zero references in his life” because there is “no bigger waste of time” than calling “someone’s PR person” – a reference your candidate told you to call. (Cheers!!! Applause!!)

But can you possibly know it’s “no bigger waste of time” if you’ve tried it Zero-point-Zero times?

I do understand the assumption and the cheers, if your company does old school rubber stamp references, but allow me to give you an edge over your competitors:

References can dodge bullets and turn into gold!

What’s wrong with most corporate references:

Necessary Evil Mindset: If your company views references as a necessary evil, with rolling eyes as you check the box, then yes. You are wasting your time. You will rarely get any information that’s of any value. You (or that company you outsourced to check references, because frankly it’s so not worth your time) are going to get the scripted PR statement that the candidate is counting on. That is a big waste of time. But...

Here's how the candidate’s PR Person can provide great value

Examples from my book of “You Can’t Make this Stuff Up! The Recruiting Edition” (not really a book, but maybe it should be)

In the last year, I pulled the plug on no less than four general manager candidates for a luxury hospitality company because of the candidate references.

In every single case: It was the candidate’s very own PR person who unwittingly helped put the nail in the coffin. Not one of them was legitimate. I’ve uncovered so many of these now, that the CFO at the hiring company and I would refer to a bogus reference as an “Art Vandelay” situation.* For those of you who are not familiar with this latex salesperson, I’ll leave you with that story at the bottom.

Clues that they were bogus references:

1.      Personal email address can be a tip off. If I’m emailing [email protected] to set up a time for a reference call, and Joe replies, I have a good sense that I’ve got the right Joe. But if it’s [email protected], I’m going to dig deeper.

In one heck-of-an-entertaining-example, “Karen” had a great resume. Great upward career trajectory with marquis luxury hotels as her employers. But her last stint was very short. She said her reference would verify great reasons for leaving, and that there was no problem. She gave me the name and contact information of the “President of the Americas” for a brand you all know. This leads me to #2, below.

2.      No LinkedIn profile, or LinkedIn profile doesn’t match what the candidate described. 

The “President the Americas” was nowhere to be found. Anywhere on the Internet. On the company website that listed presidents of other divisions, there was nothing about “the Americas.” I called their headquarters. No such role existed. Candidate lied. We dodged a bullet.

LinkedIn also helped uncover an impostor in a different way: One GM candidate gave me her “supervisor” I’ll call Nancy. On LinkedIn, Nancy was listed as a front desk supervisor (who supervised the GM?). I called Nancy, and started by asking who reported to whom. Nancy aligned with the candidate. Nancy said she was the boss. She went on to say that she just hadn’t updated her profile to indicate that now she’s a regional manager overseeing multiple properties. After we hung up, I looked more closely at the dates. Nancy started as a front desk supervisor two months after the GM candidate started in her GM role. Nancy also would have had to been promoted from front desk to regional in the span of about 4 months. Not likely.

Something smelled of Lutefisk (I’m from Minnesota, roll with me…)

Now I’m half in this for the entertainment value at this point, and still half hoping to clear things up, because I really did like the candidate. I hoped there was just some confusion. I called the hotel and asked if Nancy was ever a GM or a “regional” there. The person who answered laughed and said emphatically, “No!!! She was a desk clerk!”

Side note here: I always check a minimum of three references. You need multiple data points to corroborate the legitimacy (or lack thereof) the candidate.

3.      Reference clearly has no clue what they’re talking about. I had one candidate (an employee referral!**) who told me early in the process that his wife worked for UPS. Everybody loved this guy, and he was an employee referral… so it seemed all but a done deal. Until he gave me his references. His “boss” had a UPS email address. I had to ask: “So she used to run multiple hotels, and now she works for UPS?” That was his story. OK. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Me to the reference: “So please start by giving me an idea of the size and scope of the operation he ran, in terms of revenue, number of employees, etc.”

Her: “Oh. Umm. Err… Um… I think his revenue was like… a million?”

Me: “His revenue was one million dollars?” (Try as I might, I may have sounded a little incredulous).

Her: “Um… a quarter?”

Me: (Trying to act like $4M in revenue for a massive hotel is normal… I mean, why embarrass her, it’s her friend who put her in the situation.) “Ok. Great.” She was supposedly his boss holding him accountable for his numbers. Her answers made it apparent she knew nothing about the hotel industry, except that maybe his hotel is a fun place to take the kids.

The candidate asked if he could give me a different reference. Now that would be a waste of time.

**Beware of rubberstamping employee referrals! My recruiting buddies and I could share a number of stories of “referrals gone wrong.”

But wait, there’s more!

1.      Most people will give you something more than just the scripted superlatives if you ask the right questions. I’ve heard my share of not so pretty stories over the years. Let’s face it. We’re humans and we’re flawed. There are no humans who are walking on water these days. With all the phone cameras, we’d know about it. So, we have flaws. But we also have stuff we’re good at. Let’s figure out if the stuff this candidate is good at matches with the job, and if the flaws are things we can work with.

Thankfully, most people recognize this. They better in this tight job market! Now in the case when it’s a reference about a poor performer, the reference hopes you’ll let them off with the easy pat answers (rubber stamp!), but when pushed, they’ll give up the goods. Unless the reference has dirt on them, then I suppose that’s a whole other ballgame. 

2.      The reference’s credibility is on the line. I’m not talking about the fake references noted above. I’m talking about real people with real LinkedIn profiles who actually care about their reputation. It’s a small world out there. When you provide value, it comes back to you. It’s a karma thing. If you’re making stuff up, that comes back to you, too.

Furthermore, business professionals who have been around the block know a good recruiter when they meet one. It’s always good to have strong connections with recruiters, because they may just place you in your next big role, or help you find your next superstar employee. They want to give you something of value to build that relationship.

2a. "But what about companies that have policies against giving references," you ask. My answer: That line only seems to be used to avoid giving a bad reference. I emailed one of my well established contacts asking him for a reference for someone, he replied with the company line, that he can only confirm dates of employment. Then he sent me a separate personal email a minute later saying, "Anne, you know I'd tell you if this guy is great and give you all the details, so read that last email with that thought in mind, and act accordingly."

3.       Good people know good people! References are a great source of candidates!

PRO-TIP: I always end my reference calls by asking to connect on LinkedIn, and asking them if they’d be open to hearing about opportunities. I’ll take it even further to pitch a job to them if I have something that aligns, and ask them for referrals.

In addition to the obvious awesomeness of building a pool of talent (who by the way, are now warm leads, and I’ve had a chance to hear how they present on the phone, and we’ve started building a relationship), I also get a chance to confirm they are who they say they are.

I asked one reference to respond to my LinkedIn request as a way to confirm that I was in fact speaking to the president of company X. He did so. And then about an hour later I got an email from the president’s admin assistant telling me to ignore it. She wrote that the candidate had anticipated my move and asked her to do him a favor and respond on the president’s behalf. She ended her email with, “Don’t hire him. He’s a very bad man.” Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up. I really need to write that book. 

4.      You can get great tips on how to develop and motivate the employee!

A lot of people are uncomfortable talking about someone’s weaknesses. So you have to re-frame the question.

Examples:

“What advice would you give to the candidate’s future supervisor on how to develop and motivate the employee?”

“As we look toward onboarding this person, is there a particular area you’d recommend we spend a little more time on?

In one example, I was told that the candidate seems to get nervous around her superiors, and she can get flustered which ends up being counterproductive. “If you know that going in, and just calmly encourage and reassure her, she really blossoms.” I dug in for more examples and we talked through it. I confirmed that the employer felt this is something they could work with. Had we not known this information, she might have been quickly dismissed by leadership as timid and weak, but instead, she was encouraged, and she thrived.

5. Pro-Tip: Have the recruiter or hiring manager check the reference. They know the candidate best and can ask the most insightful followup questions. They're the least likely to rubber stamp a reference. If you must get someone else on the HR team to check references, then make sure they know you want them to dig deep. You don't want a rubber stamp. Make sure it's someone with high judgement and critical thinking skills.

I’m sure there are many more tidbits I could offer, but if you’ve made it this far, you’re a rock star! And now you probably need to get back to work. I hope this was good food for thought, and would love to hear about how you’ve found value in references.

And now my *Art Vandelay story.

I had a full-on conversation with a glowing reference for a candidate. He actually seemed to know what he was talking about and it seemed to check out. But he said he couldn’t connect on LinkedIn, because he didn’t have a profile, nor would he give me his corporate email address. A simple call to the company to ask for this person revealed he never worked there, and there was no such position as the title he claimed. The candidate later confessed that it was someone with whom he’d done business who became a friend. “But we still worked together – so he still knows I’m good. Can’t that count as a reference?”

No. It's an integrity thing.

The CFO really liked the guy (we all did) and asked me when he was starting.

My response, “I’m afraid we had an Art Vandelay situation.”

On Seinfeld, George Costanza often invoked a fictional name, “Art Vandelay.” Here is a link to a YouTube clip from an episode that immediately came to mind when this candidate was caught falsifying a reference. From then on, the two of us referenced every fake reference (four in a year!) as “a Vandelay situation.”

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