HR manager Paul Falcone felt he wasn’t getting meaningful info when he did reference checks on job candidates. To improve what he was getting — and to make better decisions about hiring — he devised a better system. Here, he tells his story:
With all the concerns about lawsuits, trying to get other employers to give meaningful reference information on candidates was becoming nearly impossible.
It’s easy to see the problem. The company gets a call out of the blue asking about someone who worked there three or four years ago.
Why should they open up to us with any more than name, rank and serial number?
That’s the problem. Coming up with a solution was another matter – until we figured out how to involve the candidates and our own supervisors in the reference process. Here’s how we pulled it off:
You make the call
As soon as we decided a candidate might be a good fit for us, we wanted to talk to past (not current) employers who might give us some further information on the candidate.
We knew the out-of-the-blue call wasn’t working and that we needed some type of ice-breaker. So, why not let the candidates be the ice-breakers?
Our instructions to the candidate went something like this: “We’d like to talk to a few of your past employers about how things worked out for you there. Please give your old boss a call explaining why we’re going to call and that you’re OK with it. Let us know when you’ve made contact and when it’s OK for us to call.”
Smoothing the way
Of course, some candidates never contacted us again. That was OK, however. We figured if they couldn’t work something out with their old bosses, then there was some sort of red flag and we were better off ending the process.
A lot of people did get back to us with the news that they’d arranged an entrée for us with their old bosses. That smoothed the way for the reference call – the old boss was prepped for the call and had the candidate’s approval to talk.
The next thing we needed to do was structure a conversation that got the information we needed to make a sound hiring decision.
Boss- to- boss
To get the right information, I brought in a third party – the person who would be supervising the candidate if hired. Why the supervisor?
I figured the person on the other end of the phone would be a lot more comfortable with talking to someone on the same level who probably worked in the same field.
For instance, if we were hiring someone in accounting, the talk went a lot better if it was between our accounting manager and another accounting manager – instead of HR manager to accounting manager.
The results: Our reference calls are a lot more like casual conversation than grilling sessions between me and some faceless manager who doesn’t want to talk in the first place.
Further, we get a lot of excellent information on which to base the hiring decision.
(From a presentation at the Annual SHRM Conference by Paul Falcone, HR director, Paramount Pictures, Hollywood, CA)
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