A Processing Fee For A Job Reference? Good Grief, What Next?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I recently lost my “real” job and am looking. I have two part time jobs but they are only minimum at 24 hours a week.

So I went to this new employment agency on Tuesday. They have to check my skills and run a reference, drug and background check. OK they did this and I passed with one hitch.

The person at the temp agency, calls me on Wednesday and tells me my last employer is charging them to get a reference.

So I call my last employer, and the H/R lady is all snippy with me. “I don’t have any time for you or anyone since we laid off so many people. You’re lucky we even give you a reference, we don’t have to give out anything or even bother to reply.”

I did a little checking and what they want for a reference check is, it’s got to be a faxed request. OK I understand that, that is fair. They will only give my hire date, separation date, job title and if I’m eligible for rehire. OK nothing too unusual about that.

But the last part says, “Before information can be given out a $25.00 processing fee is required to be paid. This covers administrative costs associated with such requests.”

I was like, “Good grief.” I have a hard enough time without any of this stuff.

What do you think this is gonna look like to potential employers. The person at the temp agency said, they had no intention of paying this and if I wanted to give them the money, they’d go forth. But I don’t want to do this, as I’m broke enough.

I suppose since my last positon was in mid managment, I made over 50K, that a job interested in me to do this would pay the fee.

The problem is, I am not even finding places to apply. All my applications have been for much lower level jobs, 'cause I had a two month notice, so I started looking in July 2011 and have tapped out the similar pay positions.

So what do you think of a lower paying job. Do you think this fee will cause a potential employer just to say, “Screw this” and go to the next candidate.

I was in this job for the last 4.5 years and I have to list it. I was trying to find a way around H/R, but they have let go the other mid managers like me and all that’s left are directors and line employees. And the directors won’t give out references, they refer the person to my former H/R.

(I tried having a few friends, call for a reference, just to see what would happen if I tried to skip the H/R and the directors, my former bosses, all said, they can’t give the info out and referred the callers to H/R.)

So has anyone else run into this? I have never run into anything so stupid in my lfie. It seems like no matter where you turn, companies are nickel and diming you to death with associated fees.

2

That’s absolutely ridiculous, but it looks like your best bet is to pony up the cash, unfortunately.

3

Do they at least guarantee a good reference for that fee?

Are they seriously going to charge for a reference like “always late, did shoddy work, unreliable…”.

I’m not saying that you’d get that type of reference. I’m sure you wouldn’t. But surely they have some ex-employees who would deserve a reference like that. Are they going to charge $25 for that?

4

And this is why HR is a useless department. Administrative cost to providing a reference? No, bitch, that’s your job.

5

The wonderful H/R lady, (who I never liked, but at least she has to work now apparently they laid us all off…)

Told me all they will give out is

Hire Date
Separation Date
Job Title
If I’m eligible for rehire

So the only negative anyone could possibly get was the last thing.

I wasn’t so much concerned about the jobs I’m looking for in my career path. I’ve been flown out for interviews in other cities. Obviously if an employer wants you they’ll pay up.

But right now I’m cash strapped, so I am looking for other jobs too. I get unemployment (reduced by the two part time jobs I have, but I still make more with the PT jobs than not).

I was thinking, like OK let’s say I’m still unemployed in November when they start hiring for Christmas. I’m not going to be going up against people with general skills.

I recall at another job I had in 2000, the H/R took so long to get background checks, (it used to take them three weeks), it was not unheard of for me to have interviewed the candidate, and had him lined up, only to find out when the background check came in, that he took another job, because we took too long.

Granted that’s not likely to happen in this economy, the chances of me applying for a job, any job, is that there will be likely to be someone of equal quality level and skill level also applying, so what isn’t easy for the hiring company, will be discarded. That’s my line of thinking

6

I would pay the $25 to get the so-called reference, and make loads of copies of it and load it into a pdf file.

You can’t be expected to pay $25 every time someone wants confirmation of past employment. Talk about kicking someone when they are down. Sheesh.

7

What advice does the temp agency have for you? I’m curious to know if they’ve ever encountered something like this before or is this pretty unique to your former employer?

I have submitted my previous employer information in the past and I have the feeling they never bothered to actually contact the employer. Is the agency attempting to place you without this info? If the lack of this reference is holding you up, you may have to bite the bullet and pay the fee, but if the agency is willing to work around this, they may help with potential employers, in explaining the situation.

I remember working in a small office and having to fill these things out for past employees and all it is is an employment verification, essentially. At least in my state, the most specific question we were allowed to answer (aside from dates of employment) was would you hire person X again. So I’m really surprised that a company would charge you for this “service.” Actually, I’m not really.

8

Strictly speaking, you’re not looking for a reference, but employment verification.

9

A lot of companies now only do employee verification via pay sites like theworknumber, which, if you pay them, will give you hire dates. For about $20 or so. If you pay double, they’ll give you salary info as well.

Copying it and saving it would do no good. ‘Here’s my resume. And here’s a PDF that says it’s legitimate, so there’s no need to backcheck. Really. Especially not about the second job on the list.’

Which, as you might imagine, from a potential employers point of view, is exactly the same as not having any work history at all. Nor can I imagine any motivation for such a policy that does not boil down to ‘we are willing to actively spend money to avoid having to deal with employee verification requests. Because the goodwill and future success of our employees is less valuable to us than a trivial amount of HR’s time.’

Staggering douchey, but what do you expect? What’s stopping employers from doing this? Manners?

Nor do I see any practical solution. You could quiz prospective employers on their employment verification process, of course . . . but what do you do if you don’t like the answers? If you’re in a position where you can tell them to blow, you’re probably not in an industry where they do this kind of check.

–
Some type of voluntary release of portions of your tax info, maybe? But that would almost have to be a government program.

10

Well, it might do SOME good. I just went through something like this myself. I no longer have copies of my diplomas - somehow the three decades since graduation and 11 moves since then of which 7 were international, combined with my complete indifference to hanging a pretentious bit of sheepskin on the wall, caused them to vanish. But in order to get a work permit in Indonesia I had to present proof of graduation to the Immigration Department; they were expecting a photocopy of my actual diploma.

When I consulted my schools I discovered that most, including mine, have now outsourced their degree verification to an on-line “student clearinghouse”. For about $8 you can submit a request to find out if so-and-so went to institution of higher learning X and graduated with degree Y in year Z.

Knowing that Immigration wouldn’t do this, I paid the stupid $8 for each school and got spam-like emails back that said “Yes, it’s true - CairoCarol has this degree.” I made screen shots of them and submitted the .png files.

Hardly a diploma, and my office was worried that Immigration wouldn’t accept it, but thankfully they did.

Talk about a rip-off money maker. I suppose I should try to get actual diplomas again, but my snooty Ivy League alma mater says it will take 6 months and cost hundreds of dollars. So I am hoping my little screen shots will continue to serve me.

11

There must be different programs. This is the company my current company now uses, and verification is free, and I control (via PIN) whether my salary information is divulged or not.

12

Hm, how about a beginning and ending paycheck stub? I had a company that had gone out of business and that is how I documented them. If needed I could have produced all 3 years of stubs. I could also produce my file copies of my assorted tax forms.

13

Can’t you just get a final transcript that includes your graduation information? We do this all the time for U.S. work visas, and I’ve never heard of a school (including Ivy League) that charges more than a few bucks. Heck, my undergrad alma mater point-blank refuses to issue duplictae diplomas at all.

14

Hey, that might be a good idea.

15

See if the agency will take a reference from one of your former coworkers who was also let go.

Sounds like your former employer is about to go under - then you’ll need to use former coworkers anyway.

16

I’m seeing new opportunities here – laid-off people contacting their former employers and saying “You know, you’re too short-handed to provide references to the hordes of people you let go; I’m looking for work: I’ll take this responsibility off your [del] whiny, uncooperative[/del] overburdened HR department for a cut of the proceeds.”
You’d have to sign a confidentiality agreement about people’s salaries/SSNs etc., but hey, it’s income, and maybe they could lower their fees now their “own people” aren’t having to do it.

And good luck.

17

It sounds like the policy of a company that’s circling the drain. First they do massive lay-offs and now they’re going to ridiculous lengths for trivial amounts of revenue. They’re probably also telling people to bring their own toilet paper in to work.

18

Years ago, I did some temp work for a trucking company. My job was to call applicants’ previous employers to get references. If they gave anything more than dates of employment and eligibility for rehire, so much the better, but all we were after were dates of employment and eligibility for rehire. Indeed, according to my boss the Department of Transportation required former employers to provide this information, when asked (at least as regards hiring truck drivers).

So, 80% of the calls I made resulted in me getting the applicants’ dates of employment and eligibility for rehire. Another 10% would tell me more; a generally even mix of good reviews and bad reviews.

The remaining 10%: you’d think I was asking the people on the other end of the line to provide me with the addresses of their children’s schools and what route they walked home. “I’m not telling you a damned thing” was a common response; when I’d respond with the information about the DoT regulations, I’d still get “I’m not telling you a damned thing,” oftentimes with “you can go fuck yourself” thrown in for good measure.

Then there was the trucking company in Hawaii (I don’t get it either). I would have to have the applicant come in a sign a document, then have it notarized, then have it sent Registered Mail, before they would tell me a damned thing. And then they might get back to me in sixty days, if they felt like it.

19

Prospective Employer: “Your last company wants $25 to provide a reference.”
You: “Yes, and you can understand why I don’t work for them anymore.”

20

Win.