3 ms·

It’s crazy that references don’t mean anything in most companies nowadays vs few years ago. That’s another ‘success’ of the overall hiring process with the vari

It’s crazy that references don’t mean anything in most companies nowadays vs few years ago. That’s another ‘success’ of the overall hiring process with the various sites and ways to be referenced to faang, etc.. Now even if you have a living and respectable proof that you have worked with this person and was good, it means almost nothing. Let’s five rounds of interviews. I have seen the same pattern even for internal transfers! Crazy!

BeFlatXIII 4y ago
References are worthless because they're used to pawn off bad employees to competitors. No HR department wants to risk a defamation lawsuit from an honest reference on a bad employee.
dudul 4y ago
Agreed. I've also seen this a few times on both sides of the fence. As a hiring manager, when I get a reference from a good report I tell HR to CT the BS and trim down the process. I talk to the candidate, have tem meet a few folks from the team and we're good to go. As a candidate, when I come in as a referred candidate and you throw your 2 hour take home in my face I'm walking away. At this point, being referred just means that you have a good chance that your resume is at least passing the first review, but that's pretty much it.
noirbot 4y ago
It's also frustrating even if it does matter. I was applying for a job where they informed me I may need to provide references, and I was having a hard time trying to come up with people I wasn't currently working with, who could speak to my skills, who I also thought were good enough writers or speakers to convey that, and were also someone I was willing to impose upon to do that for me. I've been in the industry for ten years, but if I had to narrow down to the folks I'm not currently working with who worked closely with me, it's not that many people, unless we're going to people from 5+ years ago, and at that point, if I was on the receiving end of that, I don't know if I'd trust a reference that was that out-of-date.

BeFlatXIII 4y ago

References are worthless because they're used to pawn off bad employees to competitors. No HR department wants to risk a defamation lawsuit from an honest reference on a bad employee.

dudul 4y ago

Agreed. I've also seen this a few times on both sides of the fence. As a hiring manager, when I get a reference from a good report I tell HR to CT the BS and trim down the process. I talk to the candidate, have tem meet a few folks from the team and we're good to go. As a candidate, when I come in as a referred candidate and you throw your 2 hour take home in my face I'm walking away. At this point, being referred just means that you have a good chance that your resume is at least passing the first review, but that's pretty much it.

noirbot 4y ago

It's also frustrating even if it does matter. I was applying for a job where they informed me I may need to provide references, and I was having a hard time trying to come up with people I wasn't currently working with, who could speak to my skills, who I also thought were good enough writers or speakers to convey that, and were also someone I was willing to impose upon to do that for me. I've been in the industry for ten years, but if I had to narrow down to the folks I'm not currently working with who worked closely with me, it's not that many people, unless we're going to people from 5+ years ago, and at that point, if I was on the receiving end of that, I don't know if I'd trust a reference that was that out-of-date.