Before you make an offer: Reference checks for hiring managers to do
One of the most important things for a hiring manager to do before hiring an employee is to do some homework. It used to be much more difficult to collect information about people and their past work experience than it is today. However, the location remains the same. Until you look under the hood and find out who this person really is, your company should not make an offer to hire that person. Are you doing reference checks correctly?
Who receives them?
Everyone must have a reference check before hiring or making an offer to the person. This includes anyone over the age of 18, regardless of the level of work they will be performing or how long they will be with the company. Make it a policy within the HR team to ensure that reference checks are not optional, but a requirement before hiring someone.
What is the risk?
It is also important to consider the risk level of hiring a single person. For example, most companies will not hire anyone with a criminal record. Some may need to consider who their customers or clients are and make sure the person they bring on board is someone who is okay to work with in such a situation. Although in a perfect world you would never want to hire a convicted felon, today you have to make sure you don’t.
Don’t forget the promo review
Before you promote someone, you should also do reference checks and vetting of the employee’s file first. This should be something the HR team should also do before making an offer. You should review the employee’s permanent file for any concerns. This is also a good time to run another reference check and background check on that person to make sure they have the necessary experience and skills. A promotional review like this is a critical step in the promotion process, but hiring managers can’t avoid it to speed things up.
Your HR team should make reference checks, promotional reviews, and background checks a must. This not only gives you the information you need about who this person is, but it can also give you the opportunity to get out of a situation should it arise. Before you find yourself making an offer to an employee, first get to know their background.