The Value of Recommendation

“You cannot be liked by everyone, so don’t waste your efforts in attempting so. Instead focus your efforts in finding out who really likes you and who doesn’t.”

In this article (post) I will explain why I think recommendation is the most important tool when looking to get someone aboard your team.

Discussing the issue with many recruiting managers as well as from my own experience, hiring process (especially for management roles) is a “controlled chance”. If you are looking at all of the input variables and the statistics, it has to be so. On one side you have a need to hire and you have an image of an ideal candidate you wish to hire. On the other side you may not have that straightforward abundance of choice of perfect candidates as you imagined.

Bottom line and the conclusion in these discussions in most cases was something like this: “you can never be really sure what you are getting until you had the employee in your team for a certain amount of time. This is especially true in case of management level employees.”

Now, I am not saying that the assessment processes and candidate evaluations and tests are not useful. No, they are very useful and should be done each time and as thoroughly as possible and feasible.

In this article (post) I would just like to explore in more details and point out to one area of the hiring process that I believe it not usually exploited or sometimes not even understood to its fullest extent: recommendations.

Confusion with nepotism (or cronyism or any kind of favoritism)
Interestingly enough, this area also has some negative connotations. Some people confuse it with nepotism (cronyism, favoritism). It is important to distinguish a recommendation from these. I’ve seen cases where people did not want to ask for the recommendation or rely on it in any way in order not to be “accused” of searching for some sort of immoral shortcut or being look down upon as asking for something that is not ethical.

This reputation of recommendation as being somewhat related to nepotism unfortunately has its basis. In the economy largely dominated by the government jobs (Croatia) there is a perception that this tends to be the case.

Customer reviews in our daily life
Interestingly enough, in the age of omnipresent availability and the abundance of the information about any area of our lives (products, services etc.) we increasingly rely on the “customer reviews”. Today you would not buy almost any product, go to a restaurant, and visit a city unless it has “good review scores” and great “what customers say about” section. Although, of course, we cannot compare customer reviews with employee recommendation, but to merely illustrate the importance of such method.

Customer reviews are very impartial in most cases and the high number of them gives a statistics that cannot be mangled with easily. So we take them to be reliable. In case of recommendations we don’t have such nice distribution and “sample size”. Then again, when we give recommendations we tend to be biased sometimes or even somewhat superficial, speaking in too general terms. These are two areas: number of recommendations and their extent; where I suggest more time investment and effort. Get more of them and follow through them thoroughly.

Use “recommendation” tool extensively
Not to side track, the point of this article (post) is to emphasis the importance of asking, giving and thoroughly following through your recommendations. If you have a limited amount of time for employee assessment, invest most of it in the references provided and the ones you can find.

Merely asking for two or three letters of recommendation or calling two or three references that the applicant has cited is not enough.

Here are some things that can help you get more out of the references:

• Talk to them for a longer time
  • Yes, it is difficult to spend time like that (for both you and recommenders you are asking this), but put it on a scale: can you afford the “trial and error” for this position? How many times can you make a mistake?
• Try talking to the reference more than once
  • Not that you do not believe what they say, but if you are talking to them for a second time, you will already have a certain relationship developed and they will be more likely to tell you more relevant details. You will get to know them better and they will get to know you better and understand your needs.
• Use “technology accelerators”
  • Today we already have a lot of information (recommendations) on social networks like LinkedIn is. Read and study those thoroughly as well. Follow through some of them and contact them for more information (minding privacy and confidentiality issues of course).
• Find your own references
  • Do not call and inquire only the references and contacts supplied by the applicant. Ask and research on your own. Again: minding privacy and confidentiality issued. Maybe it may not seem fair, but remember: it is your company, position, resources of other people you care about, at stake here. You need to minimize the error.
• Ask 360 references
  • If you are hiring, do not ask only the supervisors. Ask the reference from full 360 – peers and subordinates as well. Ask suppliers and partners and anybody who you might think was relevant and will be likely relevant in your position.

Positive focus
Of course, the focus should not be on finding negative traits the applicant has not revealed or show stoppers for the hire. The focus should be to learn more about the applicant in every way. One way to remedy this (not to look for a “show stopper”) is to try to ask thorough references from all of your, at least top, candidates. Use the references checks not only to find flaws, but to find qualities and discover more about those applicants that you can use in the future job.

I know this process may seem extremely resourceful and requiring significant time, but again, put it on a scale and decide: how much do you lose by a wrong hire. If you pick the right references to check and if you endure in getting enough info from them, you can benefit significantly. Remember, they have already gone through the experience of getting to know the candidate and have completed the “ultimate test”: they actually worked with the applicant.

Finally, remember one of the core learning of the “Good to Great”: fire fast, hire slow.