School reference problems

[Refereeme]

I have recently got a job offer in education. Well it is in office admin and I will not directly interact with children but I am on school premises and there will be children around and understandably there will be rigorous checks. The enhanced DBS is underway and I will pass that no question whatsoever.

But they also want references. My trouble is that I have not worked for about five years, then before that I only worked in the UK for a couple of years and before that I was overseas for seven years. I worked in a different sector in multinationals and where it is customary to only provide the basic employment verification. Also generally people are instructed to never give our personal references but to always refer back to HR. I contacted one of my previous managers last week to see if she would be prepared to provide reference, she is no longer at the company we were both at, but I have not had an answer even though I think it has been read. We had a perfectly pleasant professional relationship, but have not kept in contact over the five years since I left so it was a bit out of the blue.

I honestly don’t know where to turn. I guess the next suggestion would be friends, but I really don’t have any, I drifted away from friends when I worked overseas. I have people on Facebook that used to be good friends, but that I have barely seen for ten years and truthfully I would feel daft contacting after all this time.

Has anybody, particularly people that work in education got any suggestions, or does it sound like I will need to withdraw?

Usually the application specifies what references you need. I would put down the HR details of the last two companies that you worked at-they will provide a generic ‘x worked here from this date until that date and didn’t do anything bad whilst they were here’ and then a friend who will support you with a more in depth character reference.

Definitely don’t withdraw!

These days requests for references are more to confirm that the information on your CV is true than any expectation of a detailed recommendation, so a basic employment verification will be fine. Just give the generic HR details for the last two jobs you had.

Just give them the hr details. They only want confirmation you worked there not war and peace

So I have already been told that the basic employment confirmations will be insufficient, well not told verbally, but the forms I need to fill in have said that HR employment confirmations will be insufficient.

I should add I know that in many jobs it is only to confirm the truth in my application, I have been in the workforce for a long time so I know this. But I have never been in education sector and it sounded to me like they do things differently.

My (school support job) references were voluntary work post returning to the UK, and my old boss from my employment before leaving the uk.
You may also find you need whatever the DBS clearance certificate equivalent in your previous country was - school have my police clearance certificate from the middle east.

Yes there is mention of overseas clearance but only if you were overseas during the last five years, which I wasn’t. In any case, police clearance is not my concern, I will get that no problem from either country.

I just don’t know how to get references other than bog standard HR ones. ☹️

Keep working with them on this. Give them whatever you can get, discuss the problem with whoever has offered you the job to work out who else you can talk with. Remember - you've been offered the job by someone with knowledge of your recent work history.

I recently went back into the NHS after a very long time out (self employed in a non-medical area). Put a good friend down as a character reference. HR held things up for a while apparently waiting for a clinical reference, despite the fact that they'd been told there would not be one. The clinician arranging things with me had to go back to them and tell them again that they were happy with the reference they'd received.

Good luck sorting it out.

Thank you, yes I will keep at it. I have submitted HR contacts for the generic references, I guess I will just have to see what they say when they come back to me - although as mentioned the written blurb they have forewarned me that it won’t be enough.