Goin’ Negative—Didn’t Your Mother Tell You that If You Can’t Say Something Nice About Someone …

You know about employment policies: You can have them in place, but that doesn’t mean all your employees will follow them—even employees in the human resources department!

So, you have a policy that your company will give out only limited information on former employees, such as their title and dates of service. However, this policy is difficult, at best, to monitor, so some negative commentary may leak out—a violation of your policy and maybe the law as well.

Michigan-based Allison & Taylor Reference Checking has recently documented these actual examples of reference responses provided by former employers.

We are calling you as a reference regarding (the candidate).

• “Are you certain he gave you my name?”
• “Hold on, let me get the legal file to see what I am allowed to say.”
• “I’m surprised she even listed us on her work history.”

We would like to verify that (the candidate) held the position (title) from (dates). Is this correct?

• “His name doesn’t ring a bell.”
• “I am not allowed to say anything about this person as he was fired.”

When asked to rank the former employee in certain areas:

• “No comment—he could not do anything correctly in the position he held with us.”
• “Let’s save time. Basically, you could rank her inadequate in all areas.”

When questioned about strengths and weaknesses:

• “Weaknesses seem to stick in my mind … I’d have to really think about any strengths.”
• “I’d rather not comment—you can take that however you want.”

Regarding eligibility for rehire: Is this person eligible for rehire?

• “He is not. I’m really not supposed to say much, but he was unreliable and sick at lot.”
• “No, but I can’t say why.”
• “No, it was the departure—he kind of burned his bridges when he left.”
• “No, she stole from the company. We have an investigation pending.”

What was the reason for the employment separation? Could you fully describe the circumstances and reason for the separation?

• “I fired him! He and his buddy had some illegal things going on.”
• “It was a rather delicate and awkward situation. You should call her other past employers. I made the mistake of not doing that.”

References are asked to rank skills on a scale from 1 (inadequate) to 5 (outstanding):

• Oral communications: “Can I give a negative number like -1?”
• Financial skills: “Well, that’s why our company had a major layoff—we left her in charge of finances!”
• Written communications: “You mean when she finally turned in the reports due a week earlier?”
• Technical skills: “Is zero on your rating scale?”
• Personal integrity: “I don’t think she had any integrity.”
• Productivity: “Is there a rating less than inadequate?”
• Decision making: “He couldn’t make a decision if his life depended on it!”
• Short-term planning: “Lousy—I can’t remember something that was completed on time!”
• Long-term planning: “He wasn’t here long enough to rate him.”
• Overall performance: “Inadequate would be a positive word for him!”
• Managerial skills: “He couldn’t manage a group of children!”

Note that Allison & Taylor estimates that 50 percent of their references come back as “lukewarm” or “negative.”