I’ve seen it all with reference checks. I’ve implemented the robust Topgrading methodology and template; I’ve been in staffing where references are usually checked before an hourly consultant is sent on assignments; and I’ve served in talent acquisition environments where references weren’t even a standard procedure (*gasp*) . . . merely a case-by-case basis.

Now, I’m obviously on the search side of recruiting, so I frequently check references when serving company clients. But if I hypothetically were to rejoin the high-volume corporate in-house recruiting environment, and if I had to vote, I’d raise my hand for the case-by-case stance. Here’s why:

(1) Reference checks take extra time in the process, and all the phone tag slow’s down the recruiter. And when each recruiter has 20-30 reqs and is focused on top talent, things add up. The length of your interview process frequently makes or breaks landing that candidate. How often have we interviewed good candidates who are also in-process somewhere else? Or worse, have you ever lost a good candidate in the reference check process?

(2) Candidates are able to tee-up references to help land them a job. You think they’re going to select someone who won’t put in a good word? That doesn’t make much sense…

Here’s when I do favor reference checks:

– When you’re not quite sold on the candidate and could use additional data to consider;

– When you’re backfilling a poor performer and just want to be sure;

– When you have a certain situational nuance, and hearing about how to best way to manage this new person might be helpful, or how they tend to deal with Situation X that will no doubt arrive because it’s common to your company or industry;

– When you’re in a small environment where people exclusively own their work to the point where if that person failed, no one else could pick up the slack and the company and business performance would be drastically impacted.

If all stars are aligned, this is, in my opinion, the ideal approach for a corporation to employ:

Step 1: You hire good, proven recruiters and talent management staff. You find the ones who are inquisitive, who hold high emotional intelligence, who can read people like detectives, and who have a firm grasp of that ‘recruiter intuition’ that one develops after interviewing people daily over the years.

Step 2: Your HR team designs and rolls-out a company-wide interviewing training program for people who hire or participate in interviews. You roll-play, utilize experts, and you include talent acquisition initiatives as a performance metric in leaders.

Step 3: You eventually train everyone at the company – whether they’re a Lead Mechanic or a Finance Director – how to interview effectively, so the interview panels wean away from references and develop a sleuth-like interviewing capability, and ability to interpret consistencies they find across the board before a hiring decision is made. (This is critical regardless of reference checks).

Step 4: When the candidate is 75% complete with their interview process (and not any further than that), you decide if you will check references, or be able to swiftly move straight toward offers, assessments or final-rounds.

Will training the entire company on interviewing be a large, time-consuming project? Absolutely. But this is your talent, here. When you hire a lot, you certainly observe situations when a reference check was a game-changer, but you also see consistencies when you realize the checks didn’t really do much, or even risked landing candidates.

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