Savvy candidates will always do as much research as possible. For example, I know when hiring staff that potential consultants here in New Zealand have contacted friends in Australia to find out about their experience as both a candidate and/or client of LINK Recruitment.

Clients that are open, with nothing to hide, do not see any issue in being ‘referenced’. I haven’t had a client feel uncomfortable about it, but that would be cause for a concern (as it is when candidates are relucctant to provide referee details).

Most internal reference checking occur relatively informally, more and more clients are getting prospective employees to meet up with the rest of the team before job offer stage. This serves many benefits, including giving the existing team input into the hiring process. From the prospective employee’s point of view, it gives them a first hand understanding of the culture as well as opportunity to find out about the manager’s leadership style, establish a relationship with potential colleagues and to address any other questions that they may not have been comfortable asking previously.

In the current market urgency in hiring good people is important. With this in mind, all these extra steps may seem lengthy in time, but if you can work with a recruitment consultant to do all the ground work around setting up additionally meetings and gaining additional contact details you should be able to move quickly through the process. At the same time enabling both parties to make a more informed decision at the end of the process.

Brien

I was interested to see your suggestion about asking a prospective manager if you can reference check them – have you come across this very much? How has it been received by your clients? Have you had candidates reject a job offer based on their findings?

Laura