Job references: handle with care

For some people, the meticulous analysis of employment references is an indispensable part of every selection decision. For others, references are not worth a second glance.
In Germany, unlike in most countries in the world, every employee is entitled to a qualified written reference when the employment relationship ends.
Under section 109 (2) of the German Trade Regulation Act, that reference has to satisfy the principles of clarity, truthfulness, completeness and goodwill. A reference may therefore contain no ambiguous wording (clarity). It should contain all the material facts that matter for an overall assessment of the employee (completeness) and it should give an accurate account of their performance and conduct (truthfulness). The reference has generally to be carried by goodwill, because under German case law it must serve the employee's progress. Beyond that there are numerous further legal requirements on the form and drafting of references. There are good reasons why references should play a supporting role in candidate screening, but never a decisive one.

References are never objective

Assessments in employment references are never based on diagnostically mature measuring instruments. They are subjective judgements. Where you know little about the expectations of the person writing them, about the working environment or about the job requirements the assessments refer to, particular caution is called for.

Positive assessments in a reference also do not necessarily reflect what the previous employer believed. Often they are the result of a negotiation between the departing employee and the employer. What employer wants to argue at length with someone who is leaving about how a sentence should be phrased? Not infrequently a positive reference is the outcome of an out-of-court settlement or even of a court decision in the course of a separation. Assuming that a very positively worded reference always describes an outstanding, high-performing employee would therefore be naive.

On top of that, references often use an obscuring, standardised, formulaic language. Building blocks and decoding guides for it are available everywhere. Whether the author of a particular reference actually drew on them and used them deliberately usually remains unclear. Whether the author interprets the wording they have used in the same way as the reader does is equally unanswered. An unusual or ambiguous formulation does not automatically hide a negative message either. It may simply be the attempt of a less gifted writer to avoid uniform phrasing and express something in their own way.

Ignoring references altogether would still be foolish

Screening carries a lot of weight. Misjudgements made during screening, when written applications and references are analysed, can only be corrected by later selection methods such as interviews or assessment centres if the candidate is still in the process after the documents have been reviewed. So if candidates are overrated during screening, that error will usually still come to light later in the procedure. It looks quite different when a candidate drops out of the process on the basis of their documents and references alone and receives a rejection. Those candidates get no chance to demonstrate what they can actually do in the role in question. And the misjudgement is no longer recognisable as one. In times of skills shortages in particular, we can hardly afford this kind of error, the type II error.

Despite their limited value as evidence, references in my view always offer a good way of talking to candidates about their previous experience from a further perspective, that of the earlier employer. One essential condition for that is that both sides meet each other as equals and without prejudice. The way a candidate takes a position on individual statements in their reference usually produces additional relevant impressions of their personality and their self-image. The descriptions of duties and tasks in a reference lend themselves to a conversation about a candidate's professional experience and about how they behaved in specific situations or under specific demands. Where that works, a reference can serve as an aid to dialogue and make a good contribution to a well-founded selection decision.