It’s Time for Reference Assessments
I can remember the first time I received a call for a reference on a former employee. I was early in my career working as an assistant manager at a shop in the mall and happened to be next to my general manager as I took the call. Once my GM heard the nature of the call, he snatched away the phone to handle it himself. “Yes, the employee worked here from April until September. Yes, I’d hire them again. No, I can’t give you any further details about that employee.”
That’s what I overheard from outside that conversation. Once he hung up the phone, my manager then gave me a quick development talk, explaining the potential legal issues and the exact process my company had for reference checks.
I soon learned that it wasn’t just my company that was particularly cautious with giving reference checks, and that 10 years later that fear still lingers for many firms. Liz Ryan recently lamented on the current state of reference checks for Forbes, stating, “By the same token, my soul shrivels a tad when someone says ‘It’s hardly worth checking references anymore, since almost no one gives an honest reference.’ Over the past twenty years, large corporations and institutions have adopted no-reference policies that restrict their department managers in what they can say about former employees.”
Liz goes on to say, “If you kill the practice of reference-checking by refusing to provide references, you’re only hurting yourself.”
I agree and think it’s time that we revisit reference-checking. If you could know before the hire about how the candidate displays key behaviors related to the role, you would be in a better place to predict the candidate’s future success in your organization. Enter reference assessments. These take care of the reference-check itself, and also provide a pre-hire assessment at the same time.
Reference assessments are quicker, more efficient, have scientific integrity, and are harder to game than self-assessments. They can even help you identify which candidates might be faking a job reference, and hundreds of organizations are starting to use them with high participation rates from references.
Join HCI on August 7, 2014, at 1pm ET for the webcast The Anatomy of a Pre-Hire Reference Assessment: Big Data from References Creates Insights for Better Hiring as we explore what one of these reference assessments looks like and learn what all the buzz is about for reference assessments.
Jack Kramer, from SkillSurvey, will review:
- How to leverage data from reference assessments to predict candidate success.
- How organizations are incorporating these assessments into their hiring process.
- How overall scores and reference response rates correlate with a candidate’s likelihood for success.
- How your organization can change the perspective lens from a candidate self-assessment to an assessment from former managers and co-workers.