How to Ask Job Reference Questions

Video Transcript

"You want to hire someone, you have their reference list, and now you need to check it out. This is Gloria Campbell with Advantage Training Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I'm going to give you some ideas on how to answer or ask good job reference questions. The first thing you're going to want to do is make sure that you have the correct information. Telephone number and contact names for the job reference. Also make sure that you have the person you're calling on all of their information, previous addresses, previous and aliases in terms of names, and the dates that they were employed at the company. Once you've got that information and in some cases, legally a release from the individual to call and get the reference, you're prepared. Call the name and ask - call the business and ask for the name of the person that was the supervisor. If that person is no longer there, you'll be told that. You'll normally be referred then to the personnel or human resources department. The thing to understand is that there's only certain information that the human resources department is probably going to give you. So you're going to have to be very crafty in the questions that you ask. The typical questions are is this person eligible for rehire. You may get one or two answers yes or no. A no doesn't necessarily mean that the person was not a good employee. You might also follow up with is it your company's process to rehire, you may find that the company's policy is that they never rehire anyone. You also are going to want to know about the person's work habits, what type of an employee he was, if they'll give you information about their performance appraisals, that would be great. The other thing is ask for someone else in the organization that you may be able to talk with about that particular employee. Getting good questions gets good references. Don't be afraid to shy away from asking the tough questions, and in a lot of cases read between the lines. I've had HR departments say, well I can't really say anything. That's a red flag to me. Good questions get good answers, and that gets you good employees. This is Gloria Campbell with Advantage Training Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida, know how to ask those good reference questions."