Are you getting ready to settle down and contact a few references after an interview session? If so, you’ll need to understand the importance of best practices in this step of the hiring process. This is where you get feedback from previous bosses and learn a little bit about the applicants from another’s point of view.
Be sure to conduct the meeting well, by adhering to the following tips. Need a free online recruiting system for your hiring needs? Continue reading to the bottom of the post to see how Recruiteze can help you.
Best Practices for Reference Checking
- Schedule: Randomly calling references isn’t very professional. Instead of calling and catching them off guard or while they’re out of the office, schedule a call at their convenience. Send them a quick email or call their secretary to set the phone meeting up.
- Friendly: While this is a professional business call, it’s important to be friendly during this call. You should also let them know that whatever is said during the meeting will be kept confidential.
- Questions: Be sure to have a list of standard questions to ask at the end of the conversation. Leave the candidate’s personal life out of the conversation, but make sure you get all the information you need while talking with the reference.
In reality, we usually only call references that are given. We rarely consider talking to secondaries. Why? It’s just not necessary a great deal of the time. But, that doesn’t mean you should always count them out, especially if you feel that the primary reference is giving good reviews in a general way. If they consecutively offer up reviews that aren’t detailed, you may want to take that as a warning sign, just like the others we mentioned above.
In order to get in contact with other references, ask the primary to suggest a colleague or other reference they’ve worked closely with in the past few years. This will help you get more details when you aren’t able to find them firsthand.
Use these best practices to help you hire the best candidate for the job. If you’re interested in learning more about reference checks, visit back with our previous blogs and check back for future ones!
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