Preparing Your References

Senior candidates prepare obsessively for their interviews.

Almost none of them prepare their references the same way.

In 20+ years on the hiring side, I’ve sat through hundreds of reference calls. Here’s what I’ve watched happen, repeatedly:
The candidate sailed through the interview process. Got to the offer stage. Provided three references — usually old bosses, the obvious choices. And then a hiring manager called those references and got tepid, generic, lukewarm answers.

Not bad answers. Tepid ones. “He was great to work with.” “She always delivered.” “Good leader.”

That’s not a reference. That’s a polite memorial.

The candidate then loses an offer they thought they had and never knows why. Because the hiring manager isn’t going to tell them the references were soft. They’ll just go in a different direction.

Here’s what to do instead, and almost no senior candidate does:
• Call your references before you list them. Not to ask permission but to brief them. Tell them about the specific role, the company, the hiring manager, and the two or three things you most want them to be ready to speak to.
• Give them language. “If they ask about how I handle ambiguity, the thing I’d want you to remember is the X situation.” Most references improvise. Briefed references are sharper.
• Don’t default to your most senior reference. Default to your most articulate one. The CEO who’ll give a 90-second perfunctory answer is worse than the peer who’ll give a 6-minute, specific, detailed answer.
• Have a backup reference ready. If the hiring manager asks for someone specific,  a former boss, someone in a particular role, and you’re scrambling, that itself becomes data.

The reference call is the last 10% of the search, and it’s the part where the most senior candidates underperform their own credentials. Because they assumed the work was already done.

When was the last time you actually briefed a reference before they took the call?