Revisiting References: Tips For Employers and Candidates

Posted on April 24, 2013 by John G. Self

References and the process of reference checking are an important part of the recruitment process but employers should be cautious before they place too much emphasis on “the truth” gleaned from these pre-employment interviews, especially from those supplied by the candidate.

Candidates, on the other hand, should take a new approach to reference development and management: strategic referencing.

Let those among us who believe that references will always provide an unbiased and factual assessment of a candidate’s performance, his/her strengths and weaknesses, raise their hands. It would be nice to believe that, if it were only true.

It is a foregone conclusion that candidates almost always provide only those references who will say nice things about them.

In recent years I have seen an increasing number of clients whose skepticism of the value of these reports has risen in relation to their hiring mistakes. While employers expect the reference interviews to be conducted and submitted, they know they offer no guarantees and maybe not even the truth.

Given the cost of a miss-hire, employers are wise to question the validity of this information as well as how much weight these comments should carry in any decision to employ.

Here are several tips for CEOs or their talent acquisition teams:

Insist on eight references for all management hires: two superiors, two peers, two subordinate and two other professionals who can validate the claims made on the resume. You can ask for four up front, but prior to employment, more in-depth reference research should be completed.
All offers of employment should be contingent upon the completion of final reference checks and a background investigation.
Require recruiters to collect secondary references, those colleagues that a candidate will inevitably mention during the course of an interview. Contact them as well at the appropriate time to seek corroborating information. If recruiters are not providing that additional intelligence, then teach them or get rid of them.
Conduct background checks for up to 15 years, including a credit history, to identify patterns of behavior. The investigators should check jurisdictions for both the candidate’s place of residence and employment. This is a tightly regulated area of inquiry and recruiters must be aware of state and federal regulations that govern this important research tool. Candidates should not be eliminated solely based on a credit report that reflects the challenges of the Great Recession.

Candidates looking to distinguish themselves in the marketplace should take a new approach to selecting and managing their references. Treating references as a necessary evil, with the reference selection process almost as an after thought, is foolish.

Here are some guide points for candidates on strategic reference management:

Candidates should expect to be asked for more than three references. For candidates involved in a multiple of searches, they should develop multiple sets of references to avoid reference fatigue that comes from spending 30 or 45 minutes answering a slew of predictable questions.
Selection of references designed to cover up or minimize major career hiccups is not a particularly effective strategy. If you have made a significant mistake that led to a termination, if you were a poor cultural fit that resulted in a short tenure, or if you found yourself in a political media buzz saw or a prominent position in Google Search results, and were let go, deal with it in the referencing. If you are able to hide these events and still get the job only later to have the facts become public, you could seriously damage your credibility which could lead to a termination, depending on the fallout. The right approach is to embrace the issue or issues, and carefully recruit references who will speak honestly about the situation.
Assume that all of your warts will come out. Employers, anxious to avoid a costly miss-hire, are placing increasing pressure on recruiters to develop more complete candidate profiles. Get out in front of the issue. As I said in a recent post, be prepared for the questions and recruit reference panels that will help you convince a potential employer you are being honest, that you admit that you are not unlike most other executives, that mistakes were made or that stuff happened, and that you are better leader because you have learned from your mistakes.

Candidates who are too vague or appear to be tap dancing around a career problem only raise yellow flags for recruiters. You do not want to shoot yourself in the foot, but if you appear comfortable and confident in sharing what you think your references will say (because you already know what they will say based on your search preparation) you can minimize or eliminate recruiter anxiety.

Demonstrate that you are thorough; reinforce that you pay attention to details and that you are an honest leader with nothing to hide. This is the best way forward.

Four Jobs in Six Years? Death by A Thousand Cuts

Posted on April 17, 2013 by John G. Self

There are more than a few candidates whose job/employment history is less than stellar.

In everyone’s career stuff happens and in most cases these situations can be managed effectively without inflicting major damage to future employment opportunities.

However, when you see a resume with four to five jobs in a six or seven-year period of time, that spells trouble. The candidate with a regrettable history may be an unsung star skills-wise, but has encountered a bad workplace environment, a terrible choice in a bounce-back job or a couple of unforeseen layoffs.

For some recruiters, this type of job history merits red-flag status, meaning that the candidate will not be considered under any circumstance. Why take a risk with their client relationship, these recruiters reason. For well-qualified candidates, other recruiters will at least take the time to sort through the career carnage in an initial screening interview. The bad news for these candidates, they are unlikely to change the employer’s mind about their ability to end this career thread unless they get on top of the problem early in the screening process.

So what to do?

What not to do is suffer death by a thousand cuts, waiting for the recruiter to ask about each job change individually. The number of times a candidate is asked, so why did you leave, what happened there, or did you quit or were you asked to leave can be demoralizing, and usually the kiss of death.

What candidates rarely do is to take a direct approach. Getting out in front of these employment issues with a true but favorably worded disclosure of the various transitions which emphasize lessons learned and framing the recruiters’ inevitable follow-up questions, is the best course of action. This is not something candidates can do on the fly. It takes carefully thought out preparation, including the selection of references that can help add factual context to each transition. What the references will say should be incorporated into the candidate’s “get out in front” explanation.

Drafting a summary answer with a brief reference to each job change that opens the door for a more positive discussion and questions with the recruiter is the best way to go.

When I entered healthcare, an executive who moved every four or five years was a job hopper, someone to be viewed with enormous skepticism. Today, staying too long in one job can hurt an up and coming executive build a broad-based portfolio of experience that will lead to their dream job.

Times have changed, and four jobs in six or seven years is problematic but not career ending if the candidate takes the initiative and prepares for each interview, not sitting back and waiting for the grand inquisition to begin.

Cost Reductions and Internal Recruiters

Posted on April 8, 2013 by John G. Self

As many major healthcare systems across America continue sweeping expense reduction initiatives to lower their costs below Medicare because they want to avoid trouble, and not because they are in it, the impact this will have on recruiting is potentially significant.

At this point, for better or for worse, talent management and acquisition is not a high priority in many health systems. It is right up there with succession planning. Roughly translated, recruiting is an expense line, not an investment. The conventional wisdom is that many health systems will begin to shed their internal recruiting overhead over the next 24 months. There are some health systems that plan to retain much, if not all, of their infrastructure, but the vast majority will not.

Lest you think this is a blog post about external recruiters engaged in some very wishful thinking, you miss the point. I cannot speak for my many competitors/colleagues but I am very busy today. No, this is a post to suggest that the dynamics of finding a job will change over the next several years. In many cities, where large health systems have controlled the overwhelming majority of their own recruiting, candidates will, over time, see a return of external recruiters handling these projects in a variety of arrangements:

Contingency – the health system or hospital will pay only if the recruiter successfully places a candidate. The contingency firm will get a professional fee. Expenses incurred in the project will be to the account of that firm. Contingent firms, most of which offer placement guarantees from 90 to 180 days, will face more pressure to strengthen their accountability
Outsourcing – health systems will engage a sole source provider to handle 90 percent of their recruitment needs. Their professional fees will be tied to performance and the budgets will be designed to reduce recruiting costs by 30 to 40 percent with tough performance metrics governing time to hire, etc
Retained recruiting firms — can expect to see an increase in senior level searches but clients will be more demanding in terms of the firm’s value proposition, from the size of professional fees and expense budgets, to the length of the placement guarantee

While this trend will create disruption for candidates who have nurtured relationships with the internal recruiters, there is potentially a silver lining because it will loosen the structure giving more candidates a chance for choice positions.

This is just another example of where it pays for candidates to be flexible and to build relationships with any number of recruiters.