Mostly this. I was a hiring manager at a big company where HR made it very clear we cannot give specific feedback to applicants. We also could not give references for the same reason; fear of being sued. But after a while you learn to speak in code for those cases where you really feel you need to provide meaningful information.

The last time I was asked for a reference I was contacted by a hiring manager who said they were about to make an offer and just needed a couple references. It was a previous employee who had been a particularly low performer. My response was "Company policy prevents me from providing any references. However, (pregnant pause) you should always be very careful and selective in your hiring process." The hiring manager asking for the reference was baffled. She must have been new and had not yet learned the code. Later I bumped into her at some industry event and she thanked me profusely because my non-reference prompted her to do more digging and she learned just how bad that candidate was.

Moral of the story: learn the code (strikes me as kinda funny on HN where the usual advice is learn to code)

If you can't for legal and ethical reasons say bob sucks don't hire him then you can't communicate the same thing in a way that is as subtle as a brick.

Next time before you do something like that I suggest you communicate with your companies lawyer and ask his opinion on the matter before you get your company sued and yourself fired. Especially if you are going to discuss the matter on the public internet.

Odds are incredibly good that its trivial to discern your actual identity and that you have done the same thing repeatedly. Its entirely possible that someone could be working out right now why they weren't hired and whom they should sue.

wtf. what you are describing is something that i would say is suable. and should be.

you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ?

what are you going to do next time someone calls for reference ? the same ?

immature, questionable, discriminating practices...

It is almost like the impressions you leave with former colleagues and managers matters. Who would have thought that is what a reference call is attempting to uncover.

> you basically said dont hire that person to someone. because of your bad experience with that ex-colleague ?. you are denying that person a chance. how come ?

I disagree. If you had a bad experience with an employee and you're asked to validate the quality of that candidate why should you lie or omit that info?

When you're looking for a job do you also feel that it's wrong to ask current and former employees for references?

Furthermore, it seems you're oblivious to how many candidates outright lie about their CV and working experience.

You need info to make good informed decisions. Otherwise you have no alternative other than to fell for con jobs.

I wonder how that is actionable. I did not say anything about the candidate. Just the opposite, I was clear that I cannot say anything about him. What I said was very generic and sound advice for any hiring manager. Any negative information concerning the candidate came from somewhere else after the hiring manager did more digging. So any legal action would have to target my intent, not what I said. And my intent was for the hiring manager do a complete assessment before making a decision, which is of course sound advice, and the same advice I would give for any candidate. Good luck suing me. If the candidate wanted to sue someone they would go after whoever provided negative information, which was not me.

When asked for an assessment of a co-worker, providing said assessment is immature and somehow discriminatory? What do you even think is the point of references?

Not everyone's great to work with, I'm sure you have had a few co-workers you would rather not work with again, right?

yes, doing what the previous poster did - giving vague "bad signals" even against company's policies - is what i consider immature and discriminatory.

references in form of background check - worked years a, b, c, on projects x, y,z - yes, sure.

references about performance, likability, etc - why ? how are you going to judge that ? are the references legit ? are you going to get references on the reference giving people ? are you gonna research the excompanies culture to judge tbe referential credibility ?

you're just fooling yourself giving any meaning to this, you could be as well tossing a coin.

Reference = "A letter from a previous employer testifying to someone's ability or reliability, used when applying for a new job." [0]

What even is your rant about? Managers especially can easily tell your performance, how you get along with everyone, etc. That's the whole fucking POINT of a reference.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/reference

in most cases, people are only getting called up for a reference because the applicant specifically chose to list them. if the only person they could think of to use as a reference has nothing good to say (or gives subtle negative signals) that's a pretty strong sign there's something wrong with the fellow.

Strange. Where I live it's common practice to ask former employers about a persons performance. I you have no prior work experience they would want to call your math theacher or army drill instructor.

In the US it's illegal? It's discrimation yes but isn't that the whole point of a recruitment process?

Not at all illegal, and is quite the norm to ask for references.

You can get sued for anything - it need not be illegal to be sued for it.

It's illegal in the US for the company or anyone representing the company to say anything more than that they worked for the company, and what they worked on.

They can't tell the person that the employee was fired, or anything like that.

But as noted - there are ways used to get around such things (that is, the laws of our country). Those laws exist because people were wrongly discriminated against by using such "references".

But if you have a reference to someone you worked with, and they are no longer employed by that company - then I'm pretty sure they can answer anything they wanted too (unless there's some kind of NDA they are still under after leaving the company). Because they don't represent the employer any longer, and are a personal reference - things become more casual.

That's not illegal. HR/legal just usually prohibits it because negative feedback could potentially be used in a discrimination lawsuit.

Then what is the point of a reference?