Employee references: What's the value?
'Subject to satisfactory references ' is the final hurdle for most candidates who already have an offer in the pipeline but with applicants able to put forward their own selection of referees is their any value in pursuing what should is very often a done deal?
Is te termnology 'subject to satisfactory references' an outdated one? Our CEO Eyal Ben Cohen comments "Employers won’t learn the really ‘good stuff’ from verification letters but there is a value in verifying the basic factual elements – roughly two-thirds of CVs contain inaccuracies these range from the major to the minor from PAs that dress themselves up to MD status to minor CV gaps that can be easily explained."
Eyal Ben-Cohen, founder of Verifile, the CV verification and background screening service says that employers need to change their expectations of employee references.
“Employers won’t learn the really ‘good stuff’ from verification letters but there is a value in verifying the basic factual elements – roughly two-thirds of CVs contain inaccuracies these range from the major to the minor from PAs that dress themselves up to MD status to minor CV gaps that can be easily explained.”But being in receipt of the facts, says Eyal Ben Cohen makes it easier to make an assessment. “Would you employ a Financial Accountant for example after you’d discovered inaccuracies in their CV, if they failed to provide evidence of attention to detail and accuracy at this level, what’s the quality of their work going to be like?” reference or no reference if a person can do the job employers should be happy and he says this is what the recruitment process should be built around not verification of factual data.
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