I’ve never had to deal with this but I do wonder how people who have bad job references manage. I suppose that in some cases, an employee may leave on bad terms with his boss. A boss may be pissed at the way the employee left or there may have been workplace harassment which caused the employee to leave. What happens then? It seems like a prospective employer wouldn’t know if the bad reference or the terse, minimalistic acknowledgement that the employee worked from date A to date B is an indication of something bad about the employee or the last employer.
What about cases where the employer is no longer available? Say, if it’s a small shop, the owner dies and the business folds. Saying “I can’t provide a reference from my last boss because he’s dead” sounds rather like “My dog ate my homework”.
Is it common for prospective employers not to check references?
Most really don’t, since in the U.S. its pretty common practice to only confirm employment rather than say anything and open yourself up to liability. In other words, every company I’ve ever worked for will handle a reference call with “yes, Dangerosa worked here from January 2008 to March 2010. Her final title was Chief Poopy Scooper.”
If someone asks for REFERENCES, I give them names of people I’ve worked with - technically, these people are discouraged from giving professional references - so I give anyone who asks for references personal information for a personal reference (with the references consent, of course). No one asks any longer.
This. Many places, including unfortunately the place I work at, it is simply impossible to give a bad reference (no matter how much it may be deserved) because legal department has decided that it’s too risky.
I went thru this during my job search a couple of months back.
I had been employed for the same client for sixteen of the last seventeen years as a consultant, but for six different organizations. Four of the six no longer exist - they were bought and closed down. So when my now-current-but-then-prospective employer called to check my job history, they could not verify most of the time I had been working because their records did not report me as working for Company X before they bought Company X.
I resolved it by lying on my resume. That is, I said on my resume “Shodan worked for Company E from Feb 1997 - April 2013” and added a note at the end that I worked for Company A which was bought by B which was sold to C which spun us off as D which was acquired by E.
As documentation, I have a whole bunch of coffee cups from each of the organizations I worked for, arranged in a row on my windowsill.
It worked out, but mostly because of my personal references rather than my job references - I could and did produce several people who worked with and for me and who I worked for and with who would vouch for me that I knew how to do what I do and had actually accomplished something besides warming an office chair for the last decade and a half.
Kind of a pain in the ass, though.
Regards,
Shodan
ETA: They did actually check my references. I didn’t think that was unusual, although I see from other posts to the thread that it is. Go figure.
Right, that’s pretty standard, since anything further opens up the former employer to litigation. So, most other employers won’t bother asking. AIUI it’s still OK to ask as a follow-on “Is she eligible to be rehired?”, to learn if the termination was for cause.
Define “bad.” I’ve been successfully self-employed and/or significant business owner for 15 years, and my inability to produce three or four traditional references has blocked more than one opportunity lately. They don’t want to hear from clients or colleagues; they want someone in a supervisory role… and that would be the IRS, Alex.
It’s a pain in the ass. There are so few employers who will look outside the checklist.