In the era of globalization, Canadian employers often find themselves navigating the complex waters of international background checks. With the increasing mobility…
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In today’s rapidly evolving job market, the importance of a thorough hiring process cannot be overstated. Among the many steps involved, effective background checks stand out as…
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“It is wiser to find out than to suppose.”
As an employer, there might be different facets to the hiring process that you might be responsible for. However, one of the most important objectives of all those activities is to find the best employees possible. A part of accomplishing that is research. You need to do a little homework on who they are, where they came from, the kind of work they do and so on. This is where a good old reference check comes in handy!
Many companies and employers alike use reference checking as a tool to dive into the work history of candidates to see if they fit the role. However, there is a lot more to it than just checking someone’s resume. If you know what to ask, who to ask and how to go about it, a reference check can work wonders for your end recruitment result. In this blog, we will cover a step-by-step reference check that will give you the best results possible. Before we dive into it, you need to remember these are only the core steps that we are going to cover. You might need to add or modify steps according to your specific needs or circumstances.
The first item on the agenda when conducting a reference check process; verify that the candidate is who they claim to be. Yes, this may seem quite obvious in hindsight, but you never know if you will be able to weed out the dishonest candidates in the batch.
When you are reaching out to the previous employer, make sure to ask very specific questions. Ask about the candidate’s name, title at the previous company, dates of employment and whatever else basic information you require. Think of this as the background verification part of the process to make sure that this candidate is qualified to undergo the recruitment process. You don’t want to waste all your company’s time and resources taking them through the recruitment steps, only to find out that they didn’t even work at the capacity they claimed in the first place.
Typically speaking, one would have to deal with professional references. This is what candidates would usually provide. However, in today’s changing job market and cultural fit requirements, even personal references are sometimes taken into consideration. With this being the case, the scope for error and false information grows. It is up to you to verify who these references are. Ask them how they know the candidate in question.
Once you know their relationship to the candidate, you can easily cross-verify the authenticity of the reference provided. This adds value and weight to the information the reference provides concerning the candidate. All these factors make this an important junction in the reference check process.
Now onto the whole point of this reference check– to find out if the candidate is a good fit for the company. Use your time wisely, especially if you are talking with references over the phone. Not many will be inclined to talk to you, and even fewer might be inclined to give you all the answers you need. So, every question has to be geared towards finding out if the candidate is a good fit for your company.
Explain the scope of the job to the reference and ask if they think the candidate is a good fit for that role. If they give you vague answers or hesitate, then it may be an indicator that the candidate might not be the one you are looking for. Remember, silence speaks volumes in the face of an investigation.
No doubt you will have to have a variety of questions ready for the reference check conversation. Some questions may be more open-ended than others, but the essential idea is to get an understanding of the person behind the resume. Having said that, one of the best ways to get an idea is to ask the references to rank the candidate on a scale of 1 to 10.
Asking them to rank candidates this way forces them to think more deeply about the number as it will represent a lot of what they have to say about the person. Now don’t be fooled when someone ranks someone a 10 out of 10. No one is that perfect, nor can they be. If they rank them suspiciously high, ask some follow up questions as to why they would claim that number. The same applies if references rank candidates very low.
Here is where you cut straight to the chase. At this point, you want to point-blank ask for reference about the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, you need to know if this person will fit into the company dynamic. Being straightforward with this will give you clear cut answers that you can use to determine the final verdict. This is more about identifying growth opportunities than anything else, with the added benefit of knowing your possible future employee better.
Here is where you cut straight to the chase. At this point, you want to point-blank ask for reference about the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, you need to know if this person will fit into the company dynamic. Being straightforward with this will give you clear cut answers that you can use to determine the final verdict. This is more about identifying growth opportunities than anything else, with the added benefit of knowing your possible future employee better.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.”
Automated Reference Checking: A report by Glassdoor that was issued in June of 2015, pointed to an alarming trend. In places like the US and Canada, the average time to hire a new employee was averaging around 22 days! Now, if you think things are any better outside of the west, you would be mistaken. On average, in countries like Germany, France and the U.K. the time took almost 4 to 9 days more than that of Canada or the US. This was way back then and to be honest, that trend has largely remained true and strong to this day. Nowadays, most companies have to wait 30 days or so, almost one whole month till they can onboard the candidate!
Trivialities like the contract termination period, the notice period and even the interview and screening process all add up. Eventually, you are left with a long and winding process that you are not even sure is worth all that time and effort on your part. More often than not you might get an employee with a marginal qualification for the job, or if they are qualified, some aspect of their past might prevent them from performing the role as needed. Maybe they aren’t the best team player or have a criminal history, whatever the case, something always gets overlooked. That is why in this article we will be talking about the benefits that automated reference checking can bring to the table. We will also talk about how it can help improve the quality of your hires!
Automated reference checking gives your more actionable data that you can use to evaluate new hires. This means better quality!
Reference checking is by far, one of the most time consuming and tedious processes of recruitment. Now, if we look at traditional recruitment, in most cases, only a small portion of the references who are contacted give you all the information you are looking for. Most are simply too busy or just not willing to go through with answering the questions for fear of legal repercussions.
This leaves us with an inefficient system. Hence, we bring you the beauty of automated reference checking! As a concept, it works to streamline the entire data collection process. HR and hiring managers can quickly collect the information with little to no hassle on their part.
The fact that automated reference checking gives you more complete information, means that you have the data to make better decisions about your hires.
Throughout the recruitment process, you might have to go back and forth between several references just for a single candidate. In this process, you would have likely encountered references who waste time on the phone with vague platitudes, small talk or just simply give you the run-around. The automated reference checking process eliminates all that by allowing you to collect consistent information that specifically highlights areas of strength or weakness.
As we mentioned before, when you have a phone call with references or even an email for that matter, the number of people willing to give you the details you want is low. All you end up with is a stack of vague, half-answers that form the basis for a somewhat questionable hire.
Now, when you consider automated reference checks, people are more likely to answer surveys fully. For one, it carries an air of anonymity to it and there is no room to beat around the bush.
This gives hiring managers a better look at the candidate. Once that data is collected, you will be able to view it in a compact manner that shows you who has what skills and or weaknesses.
Data acquired quickly with better quality makes for faster hires that don’t run the risk of feeding into your turnover stats at the end of the fiscal year. Instead of focusing on your intuition, you can rely on hard facts to support your hiring choices.
If someone’s references are good, sometimes the truth is they can be too good to be true. You have to remember that at the end of the day, those are people who had a working relationship with your candidate in the past. This means they can buff the candidate’s resume more than necessary or even be protective of them to a degree.
By using the standardized format of automated reference checking, you eliminate that bias. The whole process is far less personal, so references are more likely, to be honest with you. This means you can select candidates on their merit and skill, rather than enthusiastic fluff.
