Reference Checking: Moving from Good to Better

Reference checking best practices can help agencies improve applicant assessment.

MSPB has repeatedly encouraged agencies to identify and adopt valid selection tools. The use of such tools supports merit in hiring by helping to identify the best candidates for each job opening. The MSPB report, The Federal Selection Interview: Unrealized Potential, observed that structuring employment interviews according to research-based principles improves the validity of this oft-used hiring hurdle. The MSPB report, Reference Checking in Federal Hiring: Making the Call, takes a similar approach by highlighting best practices for another frequently-used hiring tool.

The Merit Principles Survey found that 77 percent of supervisors use reference checking in their selection decisions. However, Making the Call reveals wide variation in the quality and consistency of reference checks. Unfortunately, formal measurement validity research has not yet incorporated a distinction between high-quality, structured reference checking and less formal, ad hoc discussions with an applicant’s former employers. As this distinction is recognized, the value of carefully conducted reference checks will become more apparent.

Increased standardization of reference checking and effective training in its implementation are needed to realize the full potential of this assessment tool. A survey of mostly private sector organizations found that 81 percent of those that do reference checking employ standardized questions. While this level of standardization is commendable, this data also means that one-fifth of these organizations do not have a structured questioning process. Without standardizing core reference checking questions, it becomes a more difficult and more subjective task to compare information obtained from different reference providers. The value of this information is thereby reduced.

Of greater concern is that only half of the surveyed organizations offer reference checkers training in best practices. Under conditions of low standardization and training, reference checkers are less likely to obtain useful information that contributes to effective hiring, and the potential of reference checking is then not fully realized.

In a self-fulfilling, downward spiral, this low information yield can lead to reference checking becoming a low priority. As this occurs, reference checking is even more likely to be done in a perfunctory and ineffective manner. Unfortunately, increasingly unstructured, inconsistent, and unreflective reference checks are even less likely to produce useful information. To practitioners unfamiliar with best practices, this poor result may seem intrinsic to reference checking as an assessment tool, rather than simply the result of poor implementation. This downward spiral is partially responsible for differences in reference checking practice and for some employer dissatisfaction with information obtained from reference checking.

The solution requires addressing the root problem—many reference checks are not conducted consistently or effectively. Increased standardization and training can have two important effects. First, the overall quality of information obtained from reference checking should increase. Second, hiring professionals should become more attuned to the distinction between well-designed reference checks and casual, informally conducted reference checks. This understanding can foster more useful discussion of the strengths and potential of reference checking as an assessment. ¯

Excerpted from Issues of Merit, a publication of the Office of Policy and Evaluation, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

 

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