Do candidates ever embellish or exaggerate during the hiring process?
If you answered “YES” then the next question is; "What percentage do this?" Regardless of the percentage, your job as the hiring manager is to validate that what they told you in the interview is accurate and true. The fact is, most reference checking doesn’t even touch on this issue. We ask the normal questions:
Would you hire them again?
Do they communicate well?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Are they technical?
How would you describe their management style?
And so it goes.
These are all good questions, but they don’t address the main point:
Did the candidate embellish or exaggerate?
How many times have you heard, "All my company will tell you is whether I worked there and when." or "My company has a policy that they don't give references." We hear this every time we do a search. For us these are code words for "find another candidate." Our strong belief is all top candidates have references. PERIOD.
Hiring managers must have a guide so they know what questions to ask a reference. They have to validate that what the candidate told them during the interview is true. If a candidate says, "I lead the overhaul of our operations process and it was the most successful project last year in the company," shouldn't you validate with the references that they really did lead the project and it was the most successful? Sounds logical, doesn't it? But have you ever had someone ask you that during a reference check?
Too often candidates want hiring managers to believe they lead a project, when in fact they were marginally involved.
As one hiring manager once said to us, "I want to know if the candidate was in the accident,
standing on the corner watching the accident or caused the accident."
Ronald Reagan summed up reference checking best when he said, "Trust, but verify."
Our pad of 25 templates will help you get right to the heart of the issue. We specially designed the templates to make sure you ask the right questions to validate that what the candidate said in the interview is true and accurate. Don’t accept what the candidate tells you. You need to trust and verify.
We're so confident that you'll be satisfied, we'll back it up with our guarantee.
No questions asked. Just our 100% guarantee that you'll find this to be one of your most worthy investments. If you don't agree, just send back the templates for a complete refund.
Pad of 25 Validation Reference Checking Templates - $19.95
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