8 Things You Should Know About Job References

References are a waste of time and often are colored by frendship or other bias. And credit checks are not much better as a predictor of how good an employee is. Employees should be evaluated simply on their qualifications and how they present themselves. I have worked in HR and also observed and participated in many job interviews. Good managers should be able to recognize good applicants in the interview process. Special hiring privalege should not be given to people just because they have glowing recommendations or good credit reports. I have seen people with the best of recommendations and great credit scores turn out to be some of the worst employees. In my experience a poised and self assured individual gives me a good indication that if they are stable during an interview they will likely be on the job also. The ones who fidgit, avoid eye contact or generally seem uneasy regardless of their references or credit have proven to me time after time to not work out. You cannot always judge a book by it's cover any more than you can a person with spotty credit or no references. Many times on my gut instincts or a hunch I have hired someone contrary to established wisdom and it turned out they were the best applicant rather than the one with references and good credit.

of AZ 11:14PM January 26, 2012

@Feb 18, 2011 14:42:20 PM

"Lewis", do you only hire people all of whose references are extraordinarily glowing? If you only hire people whose references are implausibly good, superhumanly flawless, a lot of the people you're hiring are people who are good at arranging super-positive fake references.

But what do I know? I had an ex-boss who took credit for my work and talked smack about me, since he couldn't give me credit for what he presented as his own work. Good thing I found out, or it could have turned out really badly for me.

Bob of 7:31AM April 24, 2011