Lets assume you’ve been beating the pavement to get a better job for a few years, but always seem to be under-employed. Each new company nibble always seems to start off great, but always with a sudden, disappointing, and quiet end with no job offer. You’ve used the same set of references and all of them (when you call them) say they are 100% right on board with you & are more than willing to be there for you and to support you.
One day, one of your job prospects (who has already said ‘no’) mans-up and plays a tape for you of the call between them & one of the reference you had listed and trusted for years. The reference is Scathing… he/she is not just damning you with faint praise but literally defaming you and your work history there, recounting half-truths as well as out-and-out lies. After this person plays it, they hit delete and the conversation is gone forever. Its now totally unprovable in a court of law.
But you now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this ‘reference’ is now (and probably has been for years)a back-stabbing snake, who has likely torpedoed every job prospect you’ve had call him/her. Assume that he/she is working as a D-band manager/director/officer for a company with VERY deep pockets, but that they’d circle the wagons around him w/o proof (and possibly even with proof). What would you do?
Erase his/her name & let it go? Consult a labor attorney? Try to have a friend at some other company call them for a reference and get it on tape? I’m just curious. Hypothetically, what would you do?
Delete them from the resume and let it go. Don’t tell them they’re being dropped from the reference list. It’s not worth the effort to get them on tape and/or subpoena-ing multiple old hiring managers to try for a very difficult defamation judgement.
If I somehow become a billionaire in the future, do a total Oceans Eleven/Terry Benedict/bankrupt his brother-in-laws tractor dealership on the guy.
Just as a point of further clarification. My idea about calling the reference is a variation of what a friend did. They could not understand why when interviewing for a job how it would go great and then after a couple days nothing. She had a friend call the references to see if any of them were giving a negative one.
Before you listed that person as a reference, did you ask that person if they wanted to be a reference for you? Or did you just blindly list them and assume they wold give you a good reference?
It might be worthwhile to have a friend go and call ALL your references just to see if any of the others are doing the same. As for the one two-faced guy, the half-truths and lies may be the only actionable item. If someone asks his opinion of you, he’s perfectly entitled to say whatever he thinks of you as long as it’s factually correct or simply opinion.
To that end, I’d simply delete him from my resume.
Taking the legal route is expensive, time-consuming and likely futile.
Just for your own satisfaction, you might want to use the suggested plan and have a friend call her/him posing as a possible employer. Tape the conversation and then confront the person with evidence. It won’t accomplish anything with regard to all those lost opportunities, but at least you’ll be able to have the satisfaction of being right.
After that, move on. Nothing good can come of trying to get revenge.
As an H/R person I can say it would be hard to prove a case. People all the time have many false beliefs on what you can and can’t say when giving references.
This is why I strongly urge everyone to check what is being said about them. Our company no longer give detailed references but I do check others. It’s surprising what your references will say about you, and you can tell the person is trying to be nice.
On the other hand, I have heard from references and I can usually tell when the applicant is getting a raw deal.
I had one interesting case, where an person applied for a job with us and her boss also applied for the same job. We interviewed the boss first and she was horrible. The other person was great. She put her boss as a reference and I had another person get a reference check for her. Of course this “boss” who we rejected was horrible her underling. But I new it was sour grapes. We hired her.
You could try to get an attorney but you’re first going to have to prove, what was said was untrue. Then it was done an overt malicious act, and that it was systematically applied to you, instead of everyone else. Finally you’d have to be able to prove the jobs you lost was due to that bad reference and not something else.
Considering the fact that since 2008, I’ve had at least five good candidates for every full and part time position we hired for, it would be tough to show the sole reason you lost out, and require some settle in compensation, was that single reference.
I wish you well in your search and I hope everyone has learned something from this. CHECK YOUR REFERENCES.
It happened on a panel that I was on two or three Christmases ago. The panel member who made the referee calls got two referees from the same company for one applicant. Both were drinking (during the day at work) which is why I recall that it was Christmas. They gave scathing reviews of the applicant. She told the applicant who confronted the referees and it turned out that they had, just as in the OP, done it several times. We were just dumbfounded because, although referee checks are always done, they are a waste of time - who cites a referee that will say anything bad about them?
I gather it didn’t turn nasty because they just didn’t want him to leave and he managed to guilt them into looking after him.