REFERENCE CHECKS CAN NOT BE OMITTED

IN THE RECRUITING PROCESS

By Ms. Diana Shen, Associate Consultant, Onpress Shanghai

Senior Researcher/Associate Consultant, Onpress Shanghai
Ms. Shen is a psychologist and has taught in a well-known girls’ high school in Shanghai. She wrote a book on the psychology of girl students while she was teaching there. She is very interested in people, and has become an effective recruiter for Onpress.

As an old saying goes: “unilateralism” will lead to an inexact judgment.

Interviewing a candidate is just this kind of “unilateralism”. We assess interviewees through their curriculum vitae and how they express themselves at interviews. In fact, even an experienced interviewer, or with several rounds of interviews, cannot avoid missing some insights into the candidates’ personality traits and past history.

In the current era, the integrity issue has become more important than ever. As a result of the “demand-exceeds-supply” job market, “counterfeits”, i.e., persons professing to have 100% integrity, are therefore rising rapidly.

In many others cases, we can make mistakes, due to our intuition, personal feeling and bias, our limited experience, and, to a certain extent, the assessment method we use.

For a professional recruiter, the interactions in an interview, or a series of interviews plus informal reference checks in the market place, may not be sufficient to judge a person accurately. Therefore, reference checks are important and cannot be omitted. This is particularly so if it is important to know how to motivate and manage the appointee effectively.

A reference check may involve the following aspects:

1. Education background: diploma, degree, qualifications;

2. Skill sets: people, communication, political and management skills;

3. Employment history: validating the history of the appointee’s employment;

4. Personality traits: attitude, capability, working habits; and

5. Others: such as achievements, strengths and weaknesses

We can perform the reference checks via several channels:

1. School: tutors, teachers, record management departments, etc.; and

2. Previous employer: bosses, supervisors, colleagues, subordinates, etc.

What time is the most appropriate to conduct the reference checks?

Based on our experience, reference checks should be conducted at the final stage of the recruitment process. At that time, we have mastered certain information about the candidate and an appointment from the employer has been initiated. To the candidate, the risk from reference checks at this time is the least; whilst to the employer, time and energy has been saved, i.e., they only need to check the related items of the person.

A word of caution!

The reference checker should have the experience and ability to avoid any legal defamation and libel cases. This is also a protection for each referee, such that each referee will say candidly about the appointee. Normally, we procure 3 to 4 names and telephone numbers from the appointee (we purposely exclude friends and family members, and want to include only previous bosses and supervisors); after speaking to each referee, we would provide a summary report to the client, without saying who says what about the appointee, that is, we write the report in such a way that the reader will not be able to identify what each referee has said about the appointee.