Employers and interviewers...I have a question for you!

[LolaTheShowgirl]

If you had a potential candidate come for a job, was excellent at the interviews and showed great ability but had problems with references, would you still offer them the job and give them a chance?

The problems with references would be the character reference may not be at the same business as it is an old contact of the candidates and they haven't stayed in touch much apart from the odd correspondence once a year. If the reference is contactable they will provide an excellent testimonal though.

The second reference is the last employer. It will be a very brief, vague reference as it is from HR in a big company. The thing is the candidate had lots of absences due to mental health issues and bereavement and was late on a number of times.

Depends how much choice I had, whether I had interviewed a number of good candidates or not. I employed someone about 2 years ago who was excellent in interview, but the reference came back stating that there had been a large number of absences. I went ahead anyway, and lived to regret it as history repeated itself. This person is no longer with the company as they had too many absences to be able to fulfil their obligations (the absences were legitimate by the way). Regarding the references, a generic HR reference isn't an issue, that seems to be the norm, and it's what our company issues. The character reference seems a bit strange - to be putting forward someone as a character reference that they are not really in touch with any more

I wouldn't be very interested in 'character' references, they have limited value as no one is ever going to nominate someone as a character reference who wouldn't say wonderful things about them. I would instead want work references, from last two jobs. If one of those two was only a basic standard reference that might be ok as long as there was another recent work reference available. I would want to have a detailed work-related reference from at least one of the jobs, and in an ideal world I'd like to speak to one of the line managers although that is not very realistic these days!

If there were issues around attendance/reliability it would depend how much I liked the candidate at interview. Assuming I thought the candidate was fantastic at interview I would want to discuss those issues with you her before offering the job. I would expect exemplary attendance from the person during and beyond probationary period.

And as funkypea says, absence issues don't tend to resolve themselves unfortunately. Again from experience, people with absence issues in previous jobs are very likely to have them again.

Hi thanks for the replies! It is for me. I have just almost secured the most wonderful job but i'm terrified the references will come back terrible. I am usually a really good 100% attender and on time for everything but I think I was jinxed in my last job with deaths and depression and everything else. As for character I did give a valid email address for the reference so hopefully they will use that. Just I don't know anyone else as my old bosses who would give me a fab reference have all moved on and unfortunately we don't have time to stay in touch anymore and I don't really know any other people apart from family to give me a character reference.

Good luck Lola . As flowery says, if they like you in interview, but had concerns about your references, they would probably discuss the reasons for the absences in some detail, and set some specific conditions into a probationary period. I don't know what role you are going for, but I would probably ask a candidate to attend a medical too.

Thats great thanks funkypea I don't mind if they discuss anything at all I just really want to go back to work especially to a job I will love.

I had a really bad time in my last company (two disciplinaries, lots of meetings with HR etc) - long story but I made lots of mistakes and the job really didn't match my strenghts. I was terrified that my references would be so poor I'd never get another job. I did - and I don't know what my previous company said about me - but given that it can hardly have been glowing I think if you perform well at interview and have a strong application it's not the be all and end all.

Aww thanks branflake, you give me hope I'm just waiting for the confirmation letter in the post now to say i've been accepted unconditionally into the team Out of hundreds of workers I don't think HR even knows who I am so hopefully they will just include my duties and how well I worked which was regularly monitored and I did work my best there, just was absent an awful lot

Just one more thing (and I'm sure you know this already), but it's actually illegal for a company to provide a negative reference (too subjective), which is one of the main reasons why most reference letters from previous employers simply state your dates of employment (and somtimes number of days absence). Keeping my fingers crossed for you

Must jump in. It's not illegal for a company to provide a negative reference. A reference should be based on verifiable facts and should not give a false overall impression of the candidate.
In practice that means most companies won't give a negative one, they'd rather say virtually nothing instead and be cautious, but in theory if there are verifiable negative facts, such as attendance record, disciplinary action, there's nothing stopping them going in a reference.

Unlikely to happen though.