Reference Checks: How the Game Has Changed

Cleveland, Ohio—It used to be that reference checks were a fairly straightforward part of the process of getting a new job. Candidates, if they passed the scrutiny of the interviewing process, submitted the name of their supervisor at their previous job and a quick phone call to verify employment was a formality.

Today, the reference check is vastly more complicated, both from the point of view of the candidate and the prospective employer, according to Allen Salikof, President and CEO of Management Recruiters International, Inc. (MRI), Inc., the nation's largest executive search and recruitment organization, and a subsidiary of Philadelphia-based CDI Corp. To start with, most candidates today are interviewing while they still have a job, foreclosing the possibility of checking with their current supervisor for verification of employment details.

The growing prevalence of the employed looking for jobs has brought broad changes in the dynamics of reference checks and in the way they are conducted. Two major shifts in reference checking have come about. First, with recruiters doing vastly more of the checking, reference checks are becoming more systematic and standardized. Checks catch more inconsistencies and red flags in a candidate's story. But the effect of a single bad reference can more easily be mitigated as multiple references are weighed against each other. Second, a much more diverse group of references has become acceptable—even desirable—to recruiters and employers than ever before.

"Employers today are looking for the best, most accurate reference check they can find. Simply put, companies cannot afford to hire the wrong person for a high profile position. Yet when you can't talk to a candidate's current employer because he or she is still working there, you've got to get creative if you're going to uncover the strengths and weaknesses that candidate will bring to a new job," said Salikof. "Yes, you can always go back to the employer before the one where the candidate now works, but there are other alternatives."

• Co-workers who may not speak officially for the company, but can speak from personal experience.
• Business contacts outside the candidate's current company who have worked closely with the candidate, such as clients or customers, joint venture or project partners, and in some cases vendors.
• A candidate's former employer who has left the company, but can stress the candidate's importance within the workplace.
• Colleagues from professional associations or other entities where the candidate's professional skills and performance might be known or evaluated.

"In general, we never look for the 'perfect' reference—incredibly glowing references are either exaggerated or refer to generalities rather than specific examples of real performance," added Salikof. "It's most important for us to determine a candidate's potential cultural fit with a company. For example, if leadership ability is a particularly sought after skill, we look to elicit very specific examples during our reference check of how a candidate has used team-building skills to create focus, drive results and energize others to initiate real change within an organization."

About Management Recruiters International

Management Recruiters International, Inc. (www.MRInetwork.com), trading as MRINetwork, is one of the world's largest search and recruitment organizations with more than 1,100 offices in over 35 countries and systemwide billings of nearly $500 million. Management Recruiters International, Inc. is a subsidiary of staffing and outsourcing leader CDI Corp. (NYSE: CDI), a global provider of engineering and information technology outsource solutions and professional staffing (www.cdicorp.com).