Soft Skills

Reference check: a perspective

Vikram Bhardwaj focusses on the nitty-gritties of the reference check process.

Recently, a large Indian conglomerate proposing a JV with a global MNC short-listed a candidate with 28 years of experience for the CEO role. The identified professional has the following credentials—IIT and IIM, eight years in the current company, overall only three job changes, all in progressive roles with blue-chip companies. He is one of those unsung professionals with a wide array of achievements yet not a publicly recognised figure.

The company decides to carry out extensive referencing on the individual with his ex-colleagues, people who’ve worked closely with the candidate in the recent past. (Each one of them seemingly gives a ‘hands down’ positive reference on the candidate.) The prospective employer now wishes to talk to a few vendors, auditors, contractors and other external parties. In all, eight independent references have already been conducted over a period of three weeks, and the candidate is exasperated to note that the employer does not trust its own and eight other independent referee’s judgement on the candidate. The word is out in the market, and a business newspaper has already announced in its snippet column that the person is joining this company—with huge embarrassment to the candidate.

This stage of the hiring process deserves the most attention from any prospective employer’s standpoint. There is too much at stake and a bad hire resulting from a poor or negligent reference check process is sure to spell disaster. From the company’s viewpoint, at the senior executive level, reference checks are one of the most useful sources of information about a candidate’s past performance, personal and professional traits, behaviour/character, credibility, relationship skills, people handling skills, etc.

Reference checks can many a time be the only source of information for a given criterion (e.g. people handling abilities), and help in corroborating, clarifying and aiding the decision-making process. Several times however, the process itself becomes the over-riding objective, even more than the inference for which it is sought. Here’s how.

• First, the candidate’s perspective is more often than not ignored. If the reference check is to be used to assess and gather qualitative inputs from the referees, then candidate consent is required to check references, more so when independent referees are being spoken to. After all, it’s a matter of courtesy to the candidate.
• Second, at what stage is the reference process being undertaken? The prospective employer may like to have this at the short-list stage itself, when the process is far from being close to the offer stage. This is okay as long as point one is taken care of—the prospective employer directly calling the referees at this stage would make the candidate’s situation embarrassing if the hiring doesn’t work out.
• Third, how many independent referees should the client call? Should the number be made apparent to the candidate beforehand? Generally it is an accepted practice—only with the candidate’s consent—to have a maximum of four- five independent reference checks, unless something specific has been inferred from the discussions with the referees which needs further corroboration.
• Fourth, apart from the process checks mentioned above, for a meaningful analysis one has to clearly gather and use information relative to the skills, performance and behavioural traits in question. In other words, the information to go after are facts, descriptions, relevant incidents and behavioural examples rather than opinions. Opinions are subjective. The referee’s definition of the qualification may be different from your own, or he may have different criteria on which to evaluate performances. What may be undesirable in the eyes of the referee may be just what you’ve been looking for.
• Fifth, several employers (including their search partners) like to check references in writing. Written reference checks do not permit one to catch the hesitations, the inconsistencies, or the ‘off-the-cuff’ remarks that can be most telling. It is also not possible to ask follow-up questions on the basis of answers to previous questions. Here it is important to differentiate the reference check process from the background screening which is deployed at the mid-management/entry levels to check things like the authenticity of qualifications and reliability of employment information provided.
• Sixth, it has been observed that several times clients do not focus on the pattern of evidence but give undue weightage to isolated incidents which are subject to distortion based on individual perceptions. Diagnose unusual hesitations, ambiguous or evasive responses, overtly enthusiastic or vindictive responses, and recheck the same with other referees to draw out a pattern if possible. Do not arrive at conclusions immediately.

In the example above, thorough preparation, planning and meaningful information gathering would have resulted in consistent inferences, saving much embarrassment to all parties concerned.

It is interesting to note that a large majority of firms in India have initiated reference check processes for any senior hire, either directly or through their search partners. However, few have any data to conclusively prove rejection or acceptance based on competing criteria which were resolved or vindicated through the reference checking process. Such cases highlight the built-in systemic errors in their reference checking process more than anything else. Effectively carried out, reference checks bring out critical leadership traits like bold thinking and innovation which are key decision parameters for any top-level hiring.

The author is a Partner at Redileon, the executive search firm. The views expressed here are his own