The story of B won't happen to you: Reference Checks

It must have been ten years ago when a friend, who was then partner at one of Turkey's largest stock brokerages, hired what seemed to be a highly educated, successful WASP US national - somebody whom I will call "B" - to be his right hand.

A week into the employment of B, my friend passed his desk to see him working on a comparative industry sector analysis covering a group of central Asian countries. What struck him was that B was using the table feature of Word instead of Excel, the usual spreadsheet tool employed for such work.

Suspicious, he asked B for references of former employers in the US. When contacting those referees he always ended up at voice message systems, with no one calling him back. In frustration, he checked the ivy league universities listed on B's CV and found out B never graduated, neither studied at those universities. B was fired on the spot.

A few years later this friend googles B, and found him in Seoul, happily employed for 4 years at the global strategic steering committee of the largest Korean conglomerate. He contacted the company, and after an exchange of emails and phone conversations, B was laid off immediately after. Both companies that employed B are well known, reputable organizations which somehow got fooled into employing a fraud.

While working on a North African country manager search for the largest internet search firm in the world, the client suspended the search claiming they found a "perfect" candidate. They called me 5 weeks later if I could convince an earlier presented candidate to consider their offer. The first, "ideal candidate", did pass multiple business case analysis type of interviews, but not their internal due diligence process. This because part of his CV was simple made up. Knowing the local culture and business ethics, we worked on this project heavily with internal referrals from various technology industry insiders (instead of CV's posted on the internet), and would not have walked in that trap (there is always a reason for a deal too good to be true).

Though these example are seemingly of an extreme nature, they are no mere coincidences in emerging markets. I have come across individuals modifying their CV's to hide short spells of unsuccessful employment, to some possessing the unusual talent to trick highly talented managers.

I recently interviewed someone who claimed to have graduated with a Masters in HR from "Sherwood University". This so-called university has a (suspicious) website claiming to provide higher education; however, further research found out they are not accredited, neither physically present as an institution of higher learning in the UK. When confronted, he angrily claimed we should have asked him to provide proof of his education instead of conducting our own due diligence. The irony of the story is that this individual could be traced back to a senior recruitment position at a blue chip technology multinational in Silicon Valley, California. It took them more than a year to unearth the facts.

Some people polish their credentials and CV to such extent they outright deceive prospective employers. Interviewing and evaluating an executive is one thing, listening to people who actually worked with the person in question can reveal issues that interviews will never disclose. Therefore:

Always conduct a comprehensive reference check

During a reference check I try to learn both from the professional and personal life of candidates. Once a reference check revealed a preferred candidate who, in his personal life, was depicted as a heavy drinker who could become aggressive after high alcohol consumption, and by times would womanize girlfriends of colleagues. I only learned those details after calling a close friend who worked in the company as a peer of the executive. Not every referee will disclose such information, though their demeanor during the conversation about the individual in question will hint at "issues". We do communicate this information to clients - who then decide if they will proceed (they did not in this case).

A thorough reference check is the necessary complement to the interviews conducted by both consultant and client. I always suggest clients when they prefer a particular candidate to tell me which aspects they want me to probe into. Do they believe a candidate might be too authoritarian to fit in their company culture, too diplomatic, not assertive enough, does he or she really has realized the results claimed to be achieved, can we probe more into the reasons behind a particular change of employers ?

In the next post I will cover how to put together a list of referees, what questions to ask, and how to integrate the reference check into the offer and contract negotiations. The golden rule of hiring is to ALWAYS conduct a reference check. Neglecting this step can expose one to nasty, unpleasant surprises.

I never had the case where a placed candidate was fired, but I did had clients who started working with us because the (success based) search firm did such sloppy reference check they did not discover the preferred candidate was dismissed from an earlier employment for stealing out of an escrow. Pay attention to reference checks, you can never conduct too many.