Hiring Managers – Would You Let Your Top Candidate Check YOUR References?

Asking potential employees for professional references is a standard practice—but would you ever give them access to yours?

It’s fair to say this isn’t normal in the employment world. In fact, I’ve never heard of a candidate finishing an interview by saying, “great, and if you can provide me with some references, I’ll check up on those before I make my decision.” It sounds totally backward—but is it?

Put another way, is it fair to pry into someone’s background if you’re not willing to open yourself up to the same level of scrutiny? What do you have to hide?

Now, how practical this would be in real life is up for debate, and it seems unlikely  that a hiring manager would offer someone who is considering working for them the name and number of a former employee or colleague to provide a reference. However, that doesn’t mean that the exercise wouldn’t be of use and, in fact, candidates ARE looking for this type of information, one way or another, to aid in their decision making. So, how will you address this, and in a way that will maximize the chance that the candidate will come work for you and not someone else?

Certainly, you could go out of your way to have them speak to a few different people in the organization to find out what it’s like to work on your team (and encourage honest and transparent dialogue from both sides during these conversations). I’ve written before about who, and how many people, the candidate should meet as part of the hiring process.

Otherwise, it comes down to personal branding. i.e. making sure that other peoples’ positive opinions of, and respect for, you are well documented in the public domain—whether that’s from LinkedIn endorsements or people reacting to articles and ideas you share online.

This is probably a good middle ground for the person you wish to hire to get to know what you’re about and see some of your human side without actually having to ask around before they decide to work with you.

Glassdoor and other sources of company reviews could also be useful depending on the size of your company.

Any employee will probably research what’s been written about you online—or they should—if only to familiarize themselves before an interview, so you must make sure what is out there is positive, or at the very least a fair and accurate reflection of who you are. Just as you do your research on the candidate, rest assured they’ll be doing the same research on you.

The traditional power balance might have some of you asking, “Why should I?” You may think it’s up to you to decide if you like the candidate, and they should be grateful for an offer.

But that’s simply not what hiring is about anymore. It’s about finding the right fit for both people, and that means a candidate needs to be sure they can work well with you also.

What do you think?