4 ms·

At the risk of this sounding like a bullshit platitude, if you find yourself having to really cautiously cherry-pick your references, you might want to evaluate

At the risk of this sounding like a bullshit platitude, if you find yourself having to really cautiously cherry-pick your references, you might want to evaluate if that says something about your work (it may or may not). I may have just been really lucky in my career, but there isn't anyone I've worked with (either as a coworker, manager, or as an underling) who I wouldn't feel comfortable being a reference. That's not to say there aren't people who I wouldn't chose to be a reference (maybe we didn't work together very closely), but seriously, nobody who if I were on trial and the prosecutor called as a "surprise witness" I'd cringe and worry that they might say something negative about my work.

tptacek 15y ago
As someone who was once (not too long ago) blindsided by an unexpectedly- somewhat- negative reference, and who has seen a couple other people similarly blindsided, and where in all these cases the backdoor reference, while not a coached reference, was someone you could have seen it coming for (a manager, a close coworker, etc): It's probably a good idea to secure agreement that, should a reference call come in, you're going to get 100% positive feedback. You can accomplish that without demanding 100% positive references; just say something like, "hey, Joe, I'm getting pretty far down the road with a potential gig and they're smart and might track you down for a reference... anything I'd need to be concerned about?". Once a person tells you to your face that they're not going to say anything bad about you, they're a lot less likely to. Whereas, if you don't have the conversation at all, your coworkers can tank you without even meaning to. People who aren't experienced giving references might even think it's a good idea to balance out positive things with some (they think) minor negatives. You probably want to nip that idea in the bud, if you can. Incidentally: if you get called on to give a reference and you're wondering if maybe it'd be a good idea to sprinkle some talk about quirks and idiosyncrasies into a reference: don't. Just give boring good references.
- m0nastic 15y ago
  That's actually a good point. You should definitely make sure that you've talked to anyone you're going to list ahead of time. I've done a couple dozen security clearance interviews for co-workers or past co-workers (which is basically a hiring interview on steroids), and the rule of thumb there is absolutely that you want to give as boring an answer as possible. When I read this series of comments, for some reason I thought of the series finale of Seinfeld (the courtroom), which brought to mind that it might be useful to evaluate if in your career you've left a bunch of people who you wouldn't want a prospective employer to contact.
  - keithpeter 15y ago
    My experience of this is that the reference taker phoned up, and kept on going until the blandness wore off. The person got the job so I assume they were satisfied. I got the distinct impression that notes were being taken, and cross referenced with interview notes and the CV. I had a copy of the applicant's CV in front of me.
lsc 15y ago
eh, I wouldn't worry so much. Bad references are /rare/ - I mean, I remember once giving one client a long list of references (I'm not exactly sure why I was so concerned with this one client? this was a long time ago) anyhow, I told the client that I'd also include another reference, one that I didn't think would be great. I mean, that last reference was someone I worked for, and I didn't rip them off or anything, but I didn't do particularly good work. I did some sysadmin work for them, and I was also hosting their shit and, kinda sorta went out of business (well, that part is... complicated. the upshot is that I couldn't host their servers anymore.) The process was moderately messy and there were some unpleasant outages before I finally pushed them off on to a competitor of mine that I had worked with before. but yeah, apparently that guy, in spite of my reservations, gave me a glowing recommendation. Oddly enough, I ended up doing a less than stellar job for this person, too. I mean, I didn't rip him off, and my early work was okay, but I took several jobs from him later on when I simply didn't have the bandwidth to actually do the work. I mean, I didn't take money for the work I didn't do, but still, accepting a project and then just flaking on it is pretty rude.

tptacek 15y ago

As someone who was once (not too long ago) blindsided by an unexpectedly- somewhat- negative reference, and who has seen a couple other people similarly blindsided, and where in all these cases the backdoor reference, while not a coached reference, was someone you could have seen it coming for (a manager, a close coworker, etc): It's probably a good idea to secure agreement that, should a reference call come in, you're going to get 100% positive feedback. You can accomplish that without demanding 100% positive references; just say something like, "hey, Joe, I'm getting pretty far down the road with a potential gig and they're smart and might track you down for a reference... anything I'd need to be concerned about?". Once a person tells you to your face that they're not going to say anything bad about you, they're a lot less likely to. Whereas, if you don't have the conversation at all, your coworkers can tank you without even meaning to. People who aren't experienced giving references might even think it's a good idea to balance out positive things with some (they think) minor negatives. You probably want to nip that idea in the bud, if you can. Incidentally: if you get called on to give a reference and you're wondering if maybe it'd be a good idea to sprinkle some talk about quirks and idiosyncrasies into a reference: don't. Just give boring good references.

m0nastic 15y ago
That's actually a good point. You should definitely make sure that you've talked to anyone you're going to list ahead of time. I've done a couple dozen security clearance interviews for co-workers or past co-workers (which is basically a hiring interview on steroids), and the rule of thumb there is absolutely that you want to give as boring an answer as possible. When I read this series of comments, for some reason I thought of the series finale of Seinfeld (the courtroom), which brought to mind that it might be useful to evaluate if in your career you've left a bunch of people who you wouldn't want a prospective employer to contact.
- keithpeter 15y ago
  My experience of this is that the reference taker phoned up, and kept on going until the blandness wore off. The person got the job so I assume they were satisfied. I got the distinct impression that notes were being taken, and cross referenced with interview notes and the CV. I had a copy of the applicant's CV in front of me.

lsc 15y ago

eh, I wouldn't worry so much. Bad references are /rare/ - I mean, I remember once giving one client a long list of references (I'm not exactly sure why I was so concerned with this one client? this was a long time ago) anyhow, I told the client that I'd also include another reference, one that I didn't think would be great. I mean, that last reference was someone I worked for, and I didn't rip them off or anything, but I didn't do particularly good work. I did some sysadmin work for them, and I was also hosting their shit and, kinda sorta went out of business (well, that part is... complicated. the upshot is that I couldn't host their servers anymore.) The process was moderately messy and there were some unpleasant outages before I finally pushed them off on to a competitor of mine that I had worked with before. but yeah, apparently that guy, in spite of my reservations, gave me a glowing recommendation. Oddly enough, I ended up doing a less than stellar job for this person, too. I mean, I didn't rip him off, and my early work was okay, but I took several jobs from him later on when I simply didn't have the bandwidth to actually do the work. I mean, I didn't take money for the work I didn't do, but still, accepting a project and then just flaking on it is pretty rude.