DO E-REFERENCES HAVE VALUE?
Over the last several years, Barada Associates has been asked if we could provide e-References instead of the traditional person-to-person telephone interview reference. Where there is a demand, Barada has always tried to meet it, so we offer both types of references. For anyone not familiar with an e-Reference, it’s simply a matter of e-mailing what amounts to a questionnaire to the individual whose name has been provided by a candidate for employment.
An e-Reference offers some advantages over the more traditional type of conversational reference that are worth noting. Most important of all, doing an e-Reference is better than not checking at all. Occasionally references are more comfortable keyboarding in a response than actually talking to one of our associates. For the small HR Department, an e-Reference is also a very economical way to obtain job performance information about a candidate. For the harried HR manager, an
e-Reference is one fewer task to be performed and only requires sending the form to the reference to be filled out.
On the other hand, the HR manager will still have to read the responses sent back by the reference, and it may require more than one attempt to reach out to the reference in order to get a response. But once completed, an e-Reference often makes it easier to identify follow-up questions that can be handled with a much shorter telephone conversation once the basic information is in hand. But having been given that initial response via e-mail, it should also be easier to contact the reference to ask a necessary follow-up question because the initial introduction will have been made via the e-mail.
So, to summarize, the advantages of an e-Reference are as follows:
1. Doing an e-Reference is better than not checking at all.
2. Economy.
3. More potential convenience to the reference.
4. One less potentially time-consuming task to perform.
5. Making follow-up easier and more efficient.