Introducing Contractor Reference

Having worked in the interim recruitment market for 20 years, I have long believed the collation, management, and sharing of candidate references is particularly inefficient in the market. References should be crucial for any interim or contractor in helping them further their interim career and secure their next assignment. 

They ensure integrity, assuring a recruiter that they are making a justified recommendation, or giving peace of mind to a client that their assignment needs will be well met. And frankly, a candidate that comes with strong references is easier to place.

I’m sometimes asked who I would recommend out of a shortlist of three, which is a scenario that can be a little awkward. You can always make a judgement call based on your understanding of the candidate’s experience and strengths, but that carries some risk when you haven’t directly overseen their work nor are you necessarily fluent in exactly what they do, be that managing a complex programme or investigating serious clinical incidents. 

The very best way to impartially make a recommendation is by providing the references and letting the prospective client make an informed choice. Who better to tell the prospective client of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses than the last person who engaged them. 

And yet I have found that contractors rarely collate and manage their own referencing, preferring to leave it to agencies or only chasing them from previous clients when prospective clients want sight of them. Agencies in turn rarely share references with competitors, believing them to be their own intellectual property, or because they simply don’t want to give a competitor a helping hand in making a placement. 

This can mean references for an experienced contractor can be widely dispersed between agencies or in local files of previous clients, or for some assignments the reference may never have taken at all, and the passage of time means the referee has moved on or is unable to provide a reference with the same accuracy. 

Another key issue is referee fatigue. I have often called a referee to take a reference to be met with a weary response as the referee bemoans the fact that I am the fourth person to request the reference in as many weeks. It is no one’s fault, the candidate may work with multiple agencies, and they may also be talking to clients directly, but there is a good chance that any party actively working on that candidate’s behalf will want to secure the most recent reference, hence the multiple requests coming into the referee. 

That same referee may decide to write a comprehensive master reference, to distribute to anyone who requests it. But agencies, wanting to turn that reference call into a sales call with a potential decision maker, will often still contact the referee insisting that only answers to their specific questions will suffice. 

All of which got me thinking: there has to be a better way. 

Anyone setting up a new business will be taking a risk. That was very much the case for me when I set up Melber Flinn in 2015. We had just bought a house and I left a well paying job with another company to go it alone, but ultimately as the company has grown and achieved relative success it has all paid off. 

The experience of setting up Melber Flinn gave me a revised attitude to risk, I am a firm believer in nothing ventured, nothing gained. So having been long bothered by the issues described above, I decided to do something about it. Last year I started talking to a web development company, to create a web based service that would allow contractors and interims to chase, collate, manage and share their references. It has been under development for a while, but after a lot of tweaking and testing, it’s actually ready, it is live and you can find it at www.contractorreference.com

Contractors can register, input their assignment history, and then upload a reference for their assignment if they already have one, or request a reference by simply inputting the name and email address of their line manager for that particular assignment. Contractor Reference then automatically emails the referee with a web based reference form for them to complete. 

Once completed, the reference is then uploaded back to the candidate’s dashboard. A pdf copy of the same reference is emailed to the referee and they are urged to share it with anyone who might request it. The system will show the contractor what percentage of their assignment history is managed, it can send reminders to referees who haven’t responded, and it can automatically send reference requests to referees when the contractor is approaching the end of a current assignment. With a couple of clicks the contractor can also share one, some or all of their references with any agency or prospective client to help them secure their next role. 

There is a gap in the market for Contractor Reference.

Not just in interim healthcare where I work, but in any contracting market, whether it is for Social Care Workers in Devon, or Architects in Malaysia. 

Contractor Reference hands back ownership of referencing to candidates, making the process of collation, management and sharing references easier and more efficient.

I hope contractors and interims alike will be receptive to its arrival and recognise that use of the system has the potential to drive up standards in contracting markets.

In turn, this allows candidates to compete for roles on track record and reputation, enabling clients to make more informed choices about the best candidate options for their requirements. 

Some of the best businesses in the world started by planting a big flag in the sand. 

So this is me, flag in hand, planting. 

I’d welcome your feedback, and I’d dearly love it if you could share this article with everyone you think might benefit from it.