Expert opinion

Most people working in the housing sector are talented and committed individuals driven by positive values. However, there is a minority for whom this is not true.

Through a combination of slack selection procedures and negligence in pre-employment screening, we persistently let them into our organisations.

Even though there is no better predicator of future effectiveness than how people have performed and behaved in the past, we shy away from asking searching questions of their ex-employers. Then we’re surprised when our organisations are turned upside down and our service-users shafted by the mad, bad and dangerous to know.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…
There are tales aplenty of poor recruitment choices: how about the housing officer who, after three years in employment, is discovered never to have done the visits or racked up the expenses they’ve claimed, but who takes out multiple grievances when caught bang to rights. Or the manager who doesn’t manage so chaos rules supreme in their department.

Or, indeed, the waking nights worker who brings in their pillow to bed down for the night after they’ve filled their cars with their employers’ cleaning products and plenty of headed paper on which to print out fake references for their friends. Bullies, thieves, predators, toxic moaners, absentees - the list goes on and on.

The reasons we don’t reference properly
We want people in the door quickly and references take too much time. We don’t believe other employers will really be truthful about people anyway because if they’re bad they’ll want to pass them on or they’ll be too frightened of litigation to spill the beans. We’re liberal people in the business of working with the dispossessed and are squeamish about seeking or acting on information that prevents us giving people another chance. The age-old protocol of asking people to cite two people as referees, asking them not very searching questions, and then failing to act on the information when we get anything bad back is the way it’s always been done and nothing else seems quite cricket. Despite the evidence of who and where it gets us.

How to do it right
Make referencing the job of one or two people who have the focus and are trained to spot the scams. Ask loads of questions, including brief comments against crucial competency areas such as customer focus and team working.

Check the provenance of every reference - does the organisation actually exist and was it given by someone authorised to provide references? Go for at least five years’ worth of history.

If they’ve had eight jobs in that time go for every one but sign off once a consistently glowing picture renders pursuit of the final few unnecessary.

Make sensible adjustments to this rule for individuals who haven’t had a long work history such as homeless people or recent graduates.

If any reference is less than glittering, phone up the referee to get to the bottom of any faint praise.

If you find anything at all with a whiff about it, don’t appoint the candidate. That ‘minor’ issue alluded to by the referee could well turn out to be a major problem.

Helen Giles is managing director of Broadway’s Real People HR consultancy

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