Answers to tricky HR questions: Getting better info from references

Our team of experts fields real-life questions about every-day HR issues. Today’s topic: how to loosen tight-lipped reference contacts.
Question:
When we call potential employees references, they often refuse to do anything more than verify employment dates and positions. Is there any way we can get them to tell us more about the people we’re thinking about hiring?
Answer:
The first thing you can try is asking the applicants for help. That’s the advice of Mel Kleiman, author of Recruit Smarter, Not Harder.
Tell applicants that some of the people they listed are reluctant to talk about them. Ask if they could give the references permission to speak freely when you call. Sometimes that’s enough to get a real conversation going.
Also, during the interview, you can ask candidates what they think their references will say about them. Then when you call someone’s former boss, you aren’t stuck asking open-ended questions like, How would you rate Johns dependability?
Instead you can say something like, John told me you’d rate him as highly dependable, because he did (blank). Can you confirm that?
Questions like that are easier for references to answer, and at the very least, it’s a good way to get some back-up for what people say in the interview.