References are an important part of recruitment

Every business, everywhere, is involved in recruitment, one way or another. You are either an employer, looking to hire another employee or perhaps your first employee.

The recruitment of employees continues to be a top business challenge for employers of all sizes and disciplines and one that I expect to see businesses facing for a number of years to come.

If you are a business looking to survive in a more competitive job market, make sure your job descriptions and interviewing processes are clearly identified, aligned with your business model thus making them ‘fit for purpose’. No business can afford to ignore interviewing and onboarding practices if it wants to attract and retain top talent.

Whilst craft drinks have revolutionised the alcoholic drinks industry over the past decade and are now common across a number of different drinks, this also brings with it recruitment issues as in other industries.

Working in the field of recruitment and HR, we are often asked about the need for references or indeed whether they are in fact worth pursuing. Getting recruitment right can be expensive, getting it wrong however can cost much more.

Employers frequently consider references to be an unimportant part of the recruitment process and more so when a candidate has what is deemed to be a “glowing” CV, has successfully gone through the interview process and perhaps psychometric profiling, resulting in the reference being omitted from the process entirely.

References help to provide insight as to the character of the candidate, over and above the CV or interview.

Such checks can help to confirm the details which have been placed on their CV or application form, making sure that the candidate has not provided you with false information. Though this is likely to be a rare occurrence, not gaining references means that the only information available to be relied on is that supplied by the employee.

In circumstances where the applicant claims to have a qualification that is necessary for the job role, and then is subsequently found not to have this qualification, a reasonable procedure will still have to be followed to dismiss the employee.

A tribunal may adopt a critical stance where the applicant lacks relevant qualifications but the employer’s recruitment and selection procedures were not sufficient to identify this, and the use of references can help to support identification of any false claims.

Seeking references from past employers is also an important indicator to show how the applicant is likely to perform within the workplace and will allow employers to hire the best candidate for the future role, not just the best interviewee.

A great performance at an interview does not always show the potential the candidate has for working performance and all this entails and, though they may be able to tell you that they work great in teams, an interview is no real test for these skills.

A reference will allow a real evaluation of the candidate’s skills to determine how they will fit in with the workforce in the future.

Liz Jackson is the managing director of complete recruitment and HR solutions company, Fairways. She is also the former chair of CIPD Scotland, which represents over 10,000 HR professionals nationally. brought to you by

‘‘ References help to provide insight