I was asked to do a reference today for a former student. I'm always happy to do these and I'm always honest and fair.
This student was really good and lovely so no problem taking some time to do this out of a busy day but good god, some HR teams are getting ridiculous. They wanted it online via their own form. Fine. After loads of questions, they then wanted me to download the person specification and job spec, and assess the suitability of their candidate (my former student) for the role.
Was I being unreasonable to write (and I paraphrase slightly) isn't this the panel's job? I just said I don't think it's appropriate to ask me to do this but this is what I think her attributes are and happy to recommend her. Just ridiculous.