Everybody has personal or mediate experience with the deffect part of selecting process which could not be left without consideration during decision making of acceptance or rejection of new employee. Each employer believe it to be his natural right to find out the facts about the past of his potential employee. So why is there used the past tence?
It is double-edged weapon which is necessary to use well utherwise it will cause big damages. Hardly anybody thinks deeply about the verity.
What does it really show and can we consider it as the fact? In my opinion references have few in common with the real professional evaluation of his previous work. Usually people who are mentioned in our CV are not there by an accident, aren’t they? Will anybody put contact of someone who will say someting negative about him? I really do not think so. It is more likely that the persnon mentioned in his or her CV will remember him/her as a wonderfull colegue, in other words family friend etc. As a result we know that the applicant had at least one good friend
at his previous work. But is that really so revolutionary knowledge?
To avoid this, people sometiomes use so called inventionary strategy – they call to the same companies but to the different people. They apply to speak with the direct superior, HR manager or the owner of the company. Or with someone totally random who just pick up the phone. It seems to be reasonable – as a good way to reach the relevant information. But does it really work? Unfortunatelly even this answer is not positive. In case the person was able to do nothing but was friendly the reference will be positive. In case the person was dominant , assertive and brave, or in case he had made unpopullar decisions even though it was relevant, the reference will be negative. There needs to be at least one collegue who hated him. And maybe he had different opinions to his boss- It could be the reason to leave the job. And still there is a chance that the other part was unprofessional – in that case it will be quite natural to revange.
References are not so much about the fact. Moreover it can easily confuse us. How to cope with that? For example by precise preparation for the job interview and consideration of the right questiíons to find out naturaly who the person really is. Than there is no need to ask someone else about anything. No one is infallible. And that is why professionals use not only job interviews but also standardized psychological tests. References as an objective resource of information is really irelevant.
Boris Rafailov