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DynastyRG
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It’s a good sign when a prospective employer asks you for references. It usually means you’re a finalist for the job. It’s often one of the last steps employers make before making the offer.
How important are those references? It varies from company to company. For many employers a weak reference may not cost you the job, but a strong one can help you nail it.
“A good reference can seal the deal for a candidate,” says Shawn Vanderziel, vice president for human resources at the Field Museum in Chicago. At Enterprise Rent-a-Car, though, reference checks start at the beginning of the interview process, so they can cause someone not to get to the next round, says Marie Artim, Enterprise’s assistant vice president of recruiting.
Help the process along by providing stellar references. Prospective employers typically ask for two or three, but they don’t contact them all, and you never know which they’ll reach out to, so make sure they’re all good.
The best references you can have are your current or former bosses. That’s because prospective employers want to know about your strengths and weaknesses, your work ethic, whether you’re easy to work with and how you deal with adversity. Select someone who has shown a positive feeling about those things, possibly a person who has conducted your regular performance evaluation. “We give more credibility to someone who was above you instead of a peer,” Artim says.
Usually by the time hiring managers get to the reference phase they’ve already formed an opinion about how you’d perform at the job. “We’re seeking verification of those opinions from references,” Vanderziel says. “Every once in a while, someone will say something that will give me pause. But if I think the candidate is strong, I ask him or her more questions based on my concern. A weak reference won’t be the determining factor making me not hire someone.”
Avoid surprises by asking your former bosses if they’re sure they’ll feel comfortable serving as references. That’s particularly important because a growing number of companies have policies that their employees can’t do more than confirm that someone worked there and what their title was. They do this to avoid any chance of getting sued.
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