Professional References can Make or Break your Career
Let me start with a real life situation that I came across when I was heading an IT department of a company. It was time for annual performance reviews which, as is the practice in the corporate world, is the basis of internal promotions and annual raises in the salaries of employees. As a part of the review process, most companies give lot of importance to peer reviews. Main objective is to judge each employee’s performance as viewed by his or her peers. This helps management to view how each employee is rated by peers on performance, domain knowledge, efforts to learn, professional ethics, ability to get along with others, etc. To rule out the cases of personal disliking of some employees by others in the same or other departments of the company, we ask employees to name one or two employees of the company who they would like to be their professional references. We, in the management, then ask the person named as the professional reference by an employee to rate that specific employee on certain criteria and send us the feedback in writing. One of my direct reports named a person in another department of the same company as his professional reference. And I asked the specific person to provide feedback on this employee based on certain pre-determined criteria.
I was taken aback by the absolutely negative feedback by the named professional reference about this employee. He did not write even a single positive comment about this employee. How could that direct report of mine be so naïve to choose this person as his professional reference who almost killed his internal promotion and a raise in his salar?
As it was a performance review within the same company and many employees as well as managers considered “this employee” to be a very good hardworking person with great professional ethics, he did not lose anything here but what if he used same person as his professional reference while searching for a job outside his own company? This professional reference could kill every good chance of his getting a job without he ever realizing what is killing is his every possible job offer.
While we should never use a close friend’s name as a professional reference but it is critical to understand and study your professional references before you start using his or her name as your professional reference. While, we in management, expect professional references to give honest feedback about the prospective candidate; some professional references go overboard and base their feedback on some personal grounds rather than professional role of the candidates.
It is important for you to understand your professional reference and his/her personality. Once a friend of mine went for a job interview; on his way out right after the interview, walking towards to exit door with the vice president of the company who had just interviewed him, he suddenly saw a friend who worked together with him in a previous company. That friend just said to him, as a joke, “Are you still having trouble with the law?”Needless to say, he lost the possible job offer as the prospective employer did not want to hire a person who once had a trouble with the law. Few weeks later, that person was confronted by my friend and his reply was, “I was just kidding”. My friend did write a personal letter to the vice president of the company, who heard “that joke” but it was too late. That Vice President did tell him that he had made a decision to extend a job offer to him but changed his mind after that comment which turned out to be “a joke”.
As a job seeker, you have to play very smart while choosing professional references. While some individuals could be complex personalities, others can be too outspoken. Some individuals simply cannot be sensitive enough to understand these little things. While you do not have control on what others say, you do have the power the make a good careful decision on choosing your professional references.
And a word of advice to my readers! If someone uses you to be his or her professional reference, please be sensitive and never use your personal liking or disliking of the person as a basis of the professional feedback. We, in the management, are interested to know our prospective candidate’s professional capabilities and ethics. And, please remember your “jokes” can kill someone’s career.
Please feel free to contact us if you need some help in your job search and we will do everything possible to help you succeed.
