The Metiss Group's Blog

Past performance is always the best indication of how well a candidate will likely perform in a new role.  Interviewing and assessing candidates provides useful insight, but nothing beats knowing how they actually behaved in real life situations and talking to past associates can provide this insight.  This is why reference checks are important in the selection process.

Unfortunately, fewer and fewer hiring managers are conducting reference checks today.  Maybe they are not getting meaningful feedback, maybe they are too busy, maybe they don’t think they matter.  For whatever reason, they are missing out on crucial information.

The best way to conduct an effective reference check is to begin the conversation with the reference explaining why their insights are important to you.  Here’s how we recommend setting up the conversation:

“James has made it very far in our selection process and we are seriously considering him for our company.  It is important for us to make sure we set him up for the best possible chance for success.  To do that, we need to know when we might need to provide support and when to get out of his way. I’d like to ask you a few questions to better understand how we can make James successful.”

Then ask the reference similar behavior-based questions asked in the interview.  You’ll be amazed how much you can learn about a candidate from the reference.

Empower your hiring managers to conduct reference checks and you’ll make successful hires.

This entry was posted on October 14, 2013 at 5:00 am and is filed under Leadership, Selection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.