Over the years, we’ve helped many of the companies and the clients we’ve worked for realise a BIG mistake….hiring the wrong person. And it wasn’t necessarily during the shortlisting or face-to-face interviews where we made the connection to something fishy in candidate-town.
How have we done this?
We simply made sure that reference checks were carried out….and also that they were with the right people, addressed the ‘niggles’ found during interviews and were treated like an interview themselves!
You want the truth?
Reference checks are a good way to confirm details that a candidate has provided because, as hard as it may be to believe, some candidates are not completely truthful in their applications!
Here’s 3 tips many businesses overlook as part of their last line of recruitment defence:
- Find the telephone number for the referee or business independently if you can – calling a switchboard from a website to get to the person you’re looking for, for example. This minimises the chances that you’ve been given the details of the candidate’s relative or friend responding as if they were a colleague
- Check as many of the employment details for the companies listed on a candidate’s resume as you can – even if they’ve not been provided as a reference. Important note, only check factual information relevant to the person’s employment if the referee has not been nominated – for example, did they work at the business when they said they did and in what role. You don’t technically need the candidate’s permission to do this but it’s good practice to let people know that that’s a possibility – for example, by including a mention of the possibility in the job ad
- Use a template for reference checks – this is useful because it means you save time and ask consistent questions (and can substantiate the fairness of your hiring process)
To help kick-start your efforts with improving your recruitment activities, contact one of the RAW HR team directly to obtain a FREE copy of the Reference Check form we use ourselves.
The proof will then be in the results you start to generate and the insights you get on candidates – even for the ones you hire you’ll find the past knowledge from referees invaluable at speeding up the onboarding process and how best to manage your new employees.
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