03/31/09
Frustrated job hunters often fear that former employers are bad-mouthing them and preventing them from getting hired. Some ask friends or relatives to pose as potential employers or fact checkers, call, and try to find out what's being said. Suspicions may be confirmed - or not. Here's another way to do it for a not-too-hefty cost: Hire a reference-checking service. Some job hunters wrongly assume that professional reference checking is available only to employers. Not so. Some companies will run the checks in a job hunter's behalf. These days, that business is strong. I spoke with Jeff Shane, vice president of Allison & Taylor Inc., a reference-checking company that has been in business since 1984, serving employers, lawyers and job hunters. Shane said his company finds that more than half of all reference checks they do elicit negative information. Sometimes the comments they hear are actionable - in other words, things are said that may be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit. The rest of the time, there's no indication of possible illegality - just comments that may be either critical or positive about the job candidate's performance. Depending on the level of reference checking, Shane's company charges individuals between $69 and $99. For comparison, I checked another service, BadReferences.com, which charges a basic reference report fee of $87.95 for individuals. What the fees pay for, Shane said, are "people who are trained to do reference checking and who are very skilled at getting the information." They often get people talking, even at companies that have policies against giving anything but the standard dates of hire, pay level at departure, and "eligibility for rehire" (ineligibility is a clue the employee was fired). Shane advises job hunters to keep in close contact with their former bosses. Try to make sure the references on your resume are supportive. Good background checkers will dig beyond listed references, but those should at least be positive. (Diane Stafford is the workplace and careers columnist at The Kansas City Star. Her "Your Job" blog at economy.kansascity.com includes daily posts about job-related issues of wide interest. She can be reached at dstafford@kcstar.com.)
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