To get an insight on how your candidate actually performs on the job, it is absolutely necessary to contact your candidate’s former direct superior. You might get other information of the candidate’s employment history such as the length of service and position or title from their previous HR, but it is strongly advised to contact their former superior to get detailed information about their work performance, behavior, strengths, and weakness during their tenure.   

Based on our experience, when candidates are desperate to get a new job, they sometimes provide false referees. Some resort to providing the contact details of their immediate family or peers instead of actually providing contact details of their previous superiors.

How to prevent getting fake referees?

• Let’s do media search!
• Making a call to the company’s land-line number to ensure that your candidate’s referees indeed work at the company

It would be time consuming, but by getting the right information from the right referee, you can trust that you hired the right people for the right positions!