Reference checks: what to ask and what you won't be told

Most reference calls disappoint because the caller expected an assessment and received a confirmation. A former employer will usually verify that the person worked there, over what dates, and in what role. Many will go no further, and that is often policy rather than reluctance about this particular individual — organisations restrict what managers may say about former employees because an unfavourable comment creates risk for them.

Understanding this changes how you use the call. If you go in expecting a candid appraisal, you will treat a limited response as a warning sign, which is usually a misreading — the limits were set before your call. If you go in knowing that dates and title are the baseline, you can design the conversation around what might be obtainable beyond it, and you can read a refusal to go further as normal rather than ominous. It also means the reference call should never be the main evidence in a hiring decision. Structured interviews and, where the role allows it, a work sample carry far more weight. The reference is a check against specific things, not a second opinion on the candidate.

A few questions reliably produce something useful even from a cautious referee. The most valuable is whether they would employ this person again. It invites a yes or no rather than an assessment, it is asked so commonly that it does not feel like an invitation to criticise, and any hesitation before the answer is itself informative.

Beyond that: what the person was actually responsible for, which is worth asking because it is the cheapest way to check a claim on a resume against an independent account. What kind of work brought out their best, which is phrased positively and often yields a genuine and specific answer. What support or supervision they needed to do well — again positively framed, and the answer tells you a great deal about how much management the role will require. And whether there is anything you should know to help them succeed, which some referees will answer candidly precisely because it is framed as helping the candidate rather than as evaluating them. Ask about responsibilities before asking about performance. Referees who will not appraise someone will usually still describe what they did, and that account is where a resume exaggeration becomes visible.

The genuine skill in reference checking is interpreting non-answers, and the main risk is over-interpreting them. A referee who confirms dates and declines everything else is most likely following policy. A referee who answers warmly about several things and becomes noticeably careful on one specific question is providing information, because the change is relative to their own baseline rather than to your expectations.

The contrast is what carries meaning. Enthusiasm about reliability and a long pause on whether they would rehire is a pattern worth noticing. So is a referee who redirects a question about performance into a comment about circumstances. What you do with it, though, should be proportionate: treat it as a question to pursue, not a conclusion. Ask the candidate directly, without framing it as an accusation — 'how did the last few months there go?' often produces a straightforward account of a difficult team or a role that changed under them, which resolves it. Two things not to do: never build a rejection on a tone of voice alone, since you are reading a stranger over a phone line, and never repeat a referee's guarded remark back to the candidate in a way that identifies who said it.

Candidates supply referees who will speak well of them, which is entirely reasonable and does limit what the exercise can establish. The most useful referee is a direct former manager rather than a colleague or a friend in a senior role, because a manager can speak to responsibilities and performance while a peer usually cannot, however positively they speak.

Where a candidate offers only peers, it is fair to ask for a manager, and the response is informative in itself: a straightforward explanation such as the manager having left or the business having closed is common and unremarkable, while evident reluctance without a reason is worth a follow-up. Two constraints deserve real respect here. Do not contact a current employer without the candidate's explicit permission, because for many candidates their employer does not know they are looking and an unauthorised call can cost them their job. And ask permission before calling anyone, including for named referees, so the call is expected. If a candidate asks that a particular employer not be contacted until an offer is agreed, that is a normal request rather than a red flag, and it can be handled by making the offer conditional on the check.

The temptation to treat reference checking as a box to tick is strong, because the process is slow, the answers are often thin, and by the time you are calling you have usually decided. But the calls do catch a specific and important class of problem: claims that are simply not true. A role held for four months described as two years, a title inflated from executive to manager, responsibility for a team that did not exist. These are not rare, and they are almost invisible in an interview, because a candidate who has claimed something will answer questions about it consistently.

That is the narrow, real value: independent verification of factual claims. It is worth doing even when you are confident, and it is worth doing before the offer rather than after, since withdrawing an offer is considerably more damaging to everyone than not making one. The other reason not to skip it is that the questions above occasionally surface something significant that no interview would have reached — a pattern of conflict, a reliability issue, a reason the last role ended that differs from the account you were given. That does not happen often. It happens often enough that a call costing fifteen minutes is a reasonable trade.

Reference checking is a stage where inconsistency creeps in easily, because the calls feel informal and are usually made by one person under time pressure. The fix is the same as elsewhere: ask the same questions of every candidate's referees, record what was said, and keep that record with the rest of the hiring file. Without it, a decision influenced by a reference call cannot be explained later, and the fact that a hiring decision turned on a conversation nobody documented is a genuinely weak position to be in.

It also matters for fairness between candidates. If you call two referees for one candidate and none for another, you are applying different standards, and the difference will usually favour whoever you were already inclined towards. Two further points worth being deliberate about. Verify things you can verify independently where the role warrants it — a professional qualification or a licence is checkable at source, which is stronger than a referee's recollection. And whether any particular check requires the candidate's consent, or how the information may be handled and retained, is a question worth putting to someone who advises you on employment matters rather than deciding by assumption.