9 Questions to Ask Candidates’ References

 Not only might the answer to this question be illuminating but it can also help managers gain insight into how long a candidate might stay with a new organization.

Hiring the wrong person can be detrimental for any employer. According to a 2017 CareerBuilder survey, companies polled said they’d lost an average of $14,900 on every bad hire in the previous year. What’s more, this is a common mistake — nearly three in four employers (74 percent) in the survey said they’d hired the wrong person for a position.

One way to reduce the number of bad hires is to focus more on the information arriving from candidates’ references.

According to a 2012 CareerBuilder survey, 3 in 10 of responding employers said that when they checked a candidate’s references, a professional contact did not have positive things to say. In addition, 29 percent of the employers surveyed detected a false reference on a job seeker’s application.

To avoid bad hires and glean the most accurate information, ask these nine questions of candidates’ references:

Related: What Makes Job Seekers Lie on Their Resumes?