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By Paul W. Barada

Over the last quarter century concern has grown among employers that the people they hire are not only who they claim to be, but also that they have the skills necessary to do the job. The result: greater emphasis on careful job performance-based reference checking. Most advice has been directed toward employers about how to carefully check references, while very little advice about how to choose references has been offered to mid and senior-level managers and professionals who are in the job market themselves! What I propose to do, therefore, is to offer some practical tips to executives who find themselves on the other side of the interview desk.

1. Who to ask to be a reference. The ideal set of references should include at least one current or former superior, one peer, and one subordinate. The objective of careful reference checking is to provide the prospective employer with more than one perspective on your job performance. How one interacts with a superior may or may not be the same as the way one interacts with a co-worker or a subordinate. Once individuals have been identified, it's equally important to ask each of them, directly, if they will serve as a reference for you. There's no point in providing the names of appropriate references who don't know they're likely to receive a call from a prospective employer. Implicit in the exercise of asking is making sure that those who you've asked to be a reference will, in fact, be willing to respond to the prospective employer's questions when they're called.

2. Is there a time frame for reference selection? One of the most common misconceptions is that references can only include current co-workers. That's not true at all. Moreover, there will be many instances where you don't necessarily want a superior to know that you're involved in a job search. References, therefore, should be individuals with whom you've worked in the last five to seven years. Going back much farther than that really begins to become a test of memory when it comes to specifics about job performance. While your list can include current references, it's also important to remember that appropriate references can include retired individuals with whom you've worked in the past, as well as those who have taken other jobs or who have moved to other areas within an organization. The ultimate point is their willingness to serve as a reference for you.

3. What executive-level reference checks tend to cover. While it may seem obvious, real job performance-based reference checking tends to focus more on "soft" skills than technical expertise. Being able to identify specific job responsibilities and the ability to carry them out is fundamental. But qualities like management style, interpersonal relations, the ability to lead, the ability to work effectively as a member of a team, problem solving skills, and the ability to think critically tend to be more important in the employee selection process than understanding how the widget machine actually works - or being able to work it, for that matter!

4. How to prepare references to speak on your behalf. The most fundamental principle involved in serving as a reference is the clear understanding that only questions that relate to actual job performance should be answered. If a prospective employer asks any questions that have no bearing on overall job performance, references should be asked to politely decline to respond to them. What you do on your own time is none of the prospective employer's business - unless it impacts your job performance! It would also be wise to remind references to limit their responses to the questions asked and not to editorialize about peripheral subjects not related to your job performance. In other words, references should be advised to answer appropriate questions candidly and completely, but not to stray too far from the subject of each question.

5. Honest references vs. good references. Many job seekers at every level mistakenly believe that it's important for their references to only say good things about them. That's simply wrong. The far better approach is to encourage references to provide honest answers about past job performance. Why? In the same way that you would not want your references to lie and say you performed poorly when, in fact, you did well, you should not want them to say you did a great job at something about which you really know very little. The result of overstating job performance could easily lead to being offered a job for which you're really not qualified and at which you very well could fail - not a good career move. The idea behind reference checking is to make sure you're right for the job and that the job is right for you. More importantly, none of us is perfect! For a reference to suggest that you were perfect in all situations casts doubt on the honesty of the reference and can actually hurt your candidacy rather than help it. Honesty, in the final analysis, is always the best policy when providing reference information.

While this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of tips for your references, it does cover the basics of who to ask, the time-frame within which they should have known you, what general types of questions references should expect, how to be an effective reference, and why being honest is better than just saying "good" things about you.

Paul W. Barada is president and founder of Barada Associates, Inc. Located in Rushville, Indiana, Barada Associates is the leading reference checking companies in the country. Barada is also the author of "Reference Checking for Everyone," published by McGraw-Hill in 1994.

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