Customer Reviews

The Complete Reference Checking Handbook: Smart, Fast, Legal Ways to Check Out Job Applicants

5 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Although parts of the book are very helpful I feel that a majority of the content is aimed at getting a company to do reference checks. I found myself wandering when I was going to get past the "WHY TO" and get to the "HOW TO". I also found the number of errors in grammer and spelling to be annoying. Overall after reading the book I feel I could get by doing reference checks but I know for sure I could convince a criminal to check references on his future victims.

I thought this book was quite good, and there is nothing else out there like it. It demolishes the ridiculous mythology about liability, which contains about as much truth as your typical urban legend. The same handful of egregious cases, involving willful defamation, are the only ones ever cited in the literature on the subject of reference checking liability. But when you let lawyers run your company, that is what you get...

It also contains excellent practical advice for guerilla tactics for getting reference sources to talk. Good checklists for conducting the reference process. Well worth the cost.

Most of the info was obvious.

One new thing - get the interviewee to set up the references to call you.
He kept whining about how companies refuse to provide more than the usual hire date, job title and last day of work. He never answers the question of why a company would want to help its competition in the hiring game.

He assumes that past performance ALWAYS PREDICTS FUTURE PERFORMANCE. This may be true in a theoretical sense but he fails to acknowledge that management styles, environment and hard lessons in life also predict future performance and never indicates that these also should be inquired about.

He also failed to mention that the interviewee is also judging the company and deciding whether they want to work there or not and that certain things should be done to mitigate the feelings of interrogation and controlling that some of Andler's recommended techniques will create.