Essential Questions to Ask your Applicant’s References

Decision taken in a haste can immensely cost your business in the long term. Posing carefully devised questionnaire to the applicant’s references can help you gauge the fitness and suitability. This will prevent the risk of bad hire.

Recruiting through professional and personal references offer you with an opportunity to collect more information about them. Here are few essential questions that will help you in assessing complete information and verifying their ability to handle these tasks.

RELATION WITH REFERRED CANDIDATE

Relationship of the candidate with the reference provider will help you in getting a clear perspective. For instance, a previous manager will help you in having a complete insight into the work ethics of the candidate. For further information ask questions like where the individual first observed the referred candidate.

FOR HOW LONG THEY HAVE KNOWN THE APPLICANT

Long term relationship will offer you greater amount of information about the applicant’s work, abilities, ethic and interests. This way you can double check the information written in the resume. This will leave no room for exaggeration.

WEAKNESSES AND STRENGTHS

Most of the time candidates are not familiar with their strengths. In some cases, the third party can help you in identifying weaknesses and strengths of the applicant which gets overlooked in the interview process.

Reference will explain you their weakness and the way it can impact your business. Talking about the strength areas, you can get an idea about how the candidate’s ability helps in improving efficiency, dynamic and performing specific tasks.

WAYS CANDIDATE RELATES TO OTHERS

Contacting with applicant references will help in getting a vague idea about how these individuals maintain relationship with their clients. This will further help in determining whether this applicant has the required talent to take on particular roles. No one wants to have an employee that causes conflict on daily basis at the workplace. However it’s not mandatory for job seeker to get along with every single co-worker. Ideally a candidate should be capable of managing with other co-workers and handle conflicts in mature and calm way.

REACTION TO STRESSFUL SITUATIONS

It’s obvious that stressful situations are part of your job. Conflicts with peers, upcoming deadlines, client dissatisfaction and upcoming review adds, all this adds to your stress. The way applicant tackle any stress situations helps in determining whether that individual is having the required skill for any particular position. Never go for a candidates who tackles stress situation with anger and shows inappropriate behaviour.

You all must be familiar with the difficulties one faces when hiring a new employee. Each applicant will have different weaknesses, strength and skill that can contribute to the growth of your business. The good news is professional references can help you spot the best talent for any specific position. Many successful businesses even opt for outsourcing agency to meet the growing demand of the talent.  

Once you have the right person on the phone, ask questions that will reveal truly useful information

Once you have an ex-manager on the phone, make sure to tell them that all of their answers, no matter how glowing or how glaring, will be kept in absolute confidence. None of your conversations will get back to the candidate (let’s call that person Pat). Here are the questions you should consider asking:

1. Tell me about how you and Pat worked together

To start things off, give Pat’s former manager a chance to get comfortable and to start verifying what Pat has already told you. Find out when they worked together and for how long, and check on Pat’s title and responsibilities. Make sure you find out how closely and regularly Pat and the reference worked together.

2. Did Pat have any major accomplishments while working for you?

To some extent, this is a softball question to further relax the reference and to validate, again, claims Pat made in interviews. It’s also a reminder that reference checks are not simply a “gotcha” exercise to catch candidates in a fib or exaggeration. They are a chance to better understand the qualities and skills Pat brings, particularly if Pat’s a humble or introverted person who may have struggled selling themselves during your interviews.

3. For this position, we need someone who can __________ [fill in the most important things]. How would you rate Pat on each?

This question is essential. “This is an opportunity for you to get a third party’s perspective on the candidate’s potential skill match for the position you are hiring,” says Sean Falconer, he former CTO and founder of Proven who is now staff developer advocate and developer relations manager at Google.

To understand which of these things would be Pat’s strength — and which would be a weakness — have your reference rate Pat on each of the competencies you list. Ask them to use a 1-to-10 scale and only allow them to give you a 10 on one of them in order to get a more realistic picture. 

4. What are Pat’s greatest strengths?

The answer to this question will allow you to calibrate your impressions — based on Pat’s resume, interviews , and work samples — with those of someone who has worked alongside Pat. You’ll also have a chance to see how the response lines up with Pat’s self-assessment, which may offer a clue to Pat’s self-awareness and allow you to calibrate other answers.

5. What are Pat’s biggest weaknesses? Is there any area where they would need additional support in their first 90 days?

This question serves a dual purpose. As Pat’s prospective manager, you need to know how to make Pat successful in a new role. The question may also help you determine whether Pat is coachable. If the reference gives you an answer that is a little cliché — say, “Pat works too hard” or “they care too much” — find out what’s underneath it. Does Pat come to work exhausted? Does Pat seem low on energy? If you get a thoughtful answer here and then offer Pat a job, you will have a big head start with insights that might have taken you months or even years to acquire otherwise.

The other purpose of this question is to surface any reasons why you may want to rethink Pat as part of your team. For example, if Pat’s former boss says Pat would really benefit from some anger management classes, you might want to consider ending your interview early and moving on to Candidate B.

6. Was Pat a good communicator and listener?

It’ll be helpful to get a sense of some of Pat’s soft skills. If your reference says Pat was a good communicator, ask for an example of when that showed up. Same for listening skills. And each time you ask for a specific instance you are also checking on how well your reference really knows Pat. Of course, you can swap out these two soft skills for others you feel are more important to get info on.

7. In your experience, does Pat work better alone or with a team?

Some professionals are much better at one than the other. Your team may need someone who can go off on their own and perform magic, or you may need someone who will be the necessary glue for a large project. Make sure Pat will fit your needs. 

8. Can you give me an example of a setback or stressful challenge that Pat faced and tell me how Pat dealt with it?

Work — particularly creative and challenging work — is never an endless parade of easy victories. Obstacles are confronted, mistakes made, setbacks encountered. You want to find out whether Pat rises to challenges or simply disappears. Is Pat an exemplar of when the going gets tough, the tough get going?

Do problems unleash Pat’s creativity and collaboration or do they trigger finger-pointing and withdrawal? Try to get your reference to be as specific as possible about the circumstances of a high-stress project, the outcome, and Pat’s response and behaviour when tested.

9. Did Pat receive any promotions while at your company?

If Pat was promoted, that generally bolsters Pat’s candidacy. If not, make sure you push to understand why — no open positions, stronger internal candidates (a possible red flag), missing skill set, etc.

10. On a scale of 1 to 10, compared to other people you’ve hired, how would you rate Pat?

“You want to hear 8, 9, or 10,” writes author Jeff Hyman  in his book Recruit Rockstars. “Anything less than an 8 is a red flag, because they’re likely being generous.” If Pat’s an 8 or 9, what would it have taken for Pat to be a 10? 

11. Why did Pat leave your company?

Like your opening question, this one allows you to validate what Pat has already told you.

12. Would you rehire Pat?

“I’m looking for ‘definitely’ or ‘absolutely’ without hesitation,” Jeff says.

13. Is there anyone else you’d recommend I speak to?

It’s always a good idea to get different perspectives, so ask your reference if there is anyone else who would be good for you to talk to and can offer new insight. This could be someone who worked alongside or under Pat and can offer a different perspective.

A strong reference check can help ensure you hire the right candidate

With embellishment, embroidery, and even outright lying being possibilities during the interview process, well-executed reference checks can be truly beneficial. 

But this shouldn’t merely be seen as a chance to trip up your candidate. A real conversation with a former supervisor can have other benefits. For example, it can level the playing field for an introverted candidate.

For a hiring manager, a strong reference interview can also give you an enormous head start on managing a new employee.