requested. “Mr. Jones was my former supervisor, but we didn’t share the same perspective on some key issues. I’d recommend that you also speak with Ms. Smith, to give you a more balanced assessment of my contribution to that company.” 3. If you feel it unavoidable that a prospective employer will contact your negative reference - get proactive! Consider contacting that person directly and asking whether you can work out a mutually agreeable response to reference requests. You may be able to gain their consent to offering a neutral reference - confirming only employment dates and title - and perhaps even a verbalization of what they view as your more positive attributes. 4. If you can’t come to terms on an agreeable response, find out the company’s policy on providing a reference. Is your reference following policy? If not, contact them again and remind them that adherence to corporate policy would be in their own best interest. 5. If policy does not protect you, or if a reference continues to malign you after you’ve taken the previously listed steps, you may wish to consider a Cease & Desist letter. You may also have cause for further legal action and can consult an attorney regarding your legal rights. 6. Take care your employment references, they are an asset. For some ideas that will help keep your references praising your skills click here. Remember, what you don’t know can hurt you. If you suspect that a reference is communicating career-damaging information to potential employers, contact Allison & Taylor Reference Checking, or call 800- 890-5645. Don’t assume you know what your references are saying - be sure of it. CHAPTER 26 An Over-Informative Employment Reference: More Than Dates and Position What to Do When Company Reference Policy Is Not Honored Seeking new employment in her area, Jennifer was confident her last employer would not be a problem reference. While she hadn’t “parted company” with them on particularly good terms, her understanding was that all they would be allowed to divulge to a prospective employer were her title and employment dates. Anything beyond that would be illegal. Unfortunately, Jennifer discovered the hard way that references can - and very frequently do - offer more input than simply confirming employment dates and titles. After almost a year of job searching, Jennifer learned to her dismay that her last employer was giving her a mediocre-to-poor rating to prospective employers. She ultimately relocated, as all the local employers in her field of expertise had turned her down. Where did Jennifer go wrong here? What could she have done differently, in hindsight? First, she assumed that it was illegal for her former employer to offer negative input about her. While legal and/or corporate guidelines may indeed state that only your employment dates/titles can be confirmed, it is not necessarily illegal per se for a reference to give negative commentary about a former employee. References can - and very frequently do - offer considerably more commentary to your prospective employer than simply verifying your employment dates/title. As a result, many job-seeking candidates like Jennifer who expected a favorable (or at least neutral) assessment from their references unknowingly lose out on employment opportunities that are “torpedoed” as a result of a negative reference(s). For their own legal protection, prospective employers will almost never share with a candidate the fact that a negative reference was received. How, then, could Jennifer have known that one of her references was offering negative, perhaps unlawful input about her to a prospective employer? Even if she had known, how could she have addressed it? As mentioned above, negative input a reference offers about you is not wrongful or unlawful per se. Negative input may be illegal - some categories include discrimination , defamation, retaliation, disparagement or sexual harassment . Where a third party can document that a reference’s communication was wrongful, inaccurate, malicious and/or may fall under one of these categories, you may indeed have the ability - through an attorney - to pursue legal recourse. In situations where a
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