Why do companies do reference checks?
- To ensure that what is on paper is true;
- To look for insight that an potential employee would not share (habits, strengths, weaknesses)
- Get another persons opinion that should be someone who likes the candidate; and
- many other reasons.
So this should be an important part of your career arsenal and you should prepare the referencee to the nature of the call they are going to take. This can help greatly as they will know the nature of the call, the type of information to share and plainly know about the call and not be surprised.
I got a call this week from someone to be a reference. I am more than willing to be a reference for the person, but I did not know about it or the nature of the reference. As it turned out, this was just a general reference of a recruiter in a staffing company without any respect to a specific opportunity.
Tsk Tsk on the candidate as I was very caught off guard. Make sure your referencee knows something.
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