Andy 0:05
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. Ask the Expert edition. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of Higher Ed Jobs.

Kelly 0:13
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of Editorial strategy. Today we have Dr. Christopher D. Lee, a managing director at Storbreck Search, author of several books, and a former chief human resource officer with many years of higher ed experience. Thanks for joining us today, Chris.

Chris 0:28
My pleasure.

Kelly 0:29
So today's question from our listener is when applications ask if they can contact your current employer. I never know how to answer that. I worry that it'll make me look bad if I say no. But if I say yes, will I tip my current employer off that I'm job searching? What is the best option for candidates? Chris, what are your thoughts on this?

Chris 0:47
Yes, this is a really good question. I'm sure everybody has this sort of situation. And it is a conundrum, right? You know, that conundrum about how do you get a job without experience and experience? Without a job. You know, you need a reference, You know, someone to back you up. So very, very good question. Now, if you think about it from the employer's perspective, there's no harm in asking. But for you is kind of treacherous, as it points out. So that says to me that in order to be prepared for this question, the answer is always, yes, you can. Right. Because no, you know, that's not a good option, but you really should have three sets of references. Right. And the more important a position, the more likely they're going to be. They can do more due diligence. So having just a set of 3 to 5 references is never good enough. I would say you probably need three sets of 3 to 5 references and I'll give you the categories. And before we talk about the categories, I would say then those references are used at different stages of the process. Can you talk to my current supervisor? The answer is no. However, you can talk to a whole bunch of other people, right? And if you make me an offer, you could talk all you want. Right. And so that's kind of the issue is which references at which stage of the process. So having said that, the number one reference group is supervisors. Right. There's no substitute for having people you've worked for to speak well of you. So I said supervisors versus supervisor. So you should have former supervisors as a group, you know, So your current informal supervisors, they are a category and you have to have someone to be able to speak to your particular work. So instead of a current supervisor, when they see that, you can say, Hey, you could talk to my previous boss, right? She will tell you how great I am and that person can be offered earlier in the process if necessary. And then even at the end of the process before a job offer, person may want to talk to your current supervisor. Now, let's assuming your current supervisor is not a person who you've done well with, that you get along well with and that person might actually be the reason you're leaving, you know, So having a group of former supervisors is usually golden and some will take three former supervisors instead of your current supervisor because now you have a job offer in front of you and you say, Well, my current supervisor is the reason I'm leaving. But here are three people you could talk to. And, you know, hopefully that's good enough and most often it will be. But even if it's not, they talk to the former three and the current one didn't see nice things. You got the other three to offset it. It'll show that you were accurate. The reason you're leaving is this person doesn't support me the right way. We see the world differently and that's why I'm moving on. So for most supervisors, one group their golden and you can use them as needed at different stages of the process. Of course. Former colleagues. Right. Current and former colleagues is another category of references those of you worked with and worked around. They can be used especially early in the process, right? People can speak well to you and your experiences and how you did it. And then those, you know, kind of tangential people who are boards you've served on or your customers or vendors and people like that. Those two groups can be used at various stages of the process depending on what the employer needs, because sometimes people will check them early and then they'll, you know, decide to use references for kind of the initial video interview stage sometimes is the on campus and then sometimes a validation of a selection process. So multiple groups of references for different purposes and different stages of the process.

Andy 4:34
So, Chris, there's a couple of places where I'd like to go with this question. First question is you've had so much experience in this area, Out of all of the references that you've tracked over your career, what percentage of references actually turn out to be bad references?

Chris 4:54
15 to 20%, which is higher than you would perceive. That's because I'm an H.R. guy and specialize in this and then have some techniques to, you know, cultivate negative information, but on average is probably less than 10%. Right? Because it's kind of like the witness list, your witness list. You know, you're only going to select people who are going to give you good information. Most people are smart enough to do that. Right.

Andy 5:22
Can I ask what you did in the military then, too?

Chris 5:24
Well,

MW 5:24
you can ask

Kelly 5:26
intelligence,

Chris 5:27
but there's ways to get good information. So the best ways to get good information is to talk to people who are not on a person's reference list. And you you should. And it's really pretty much a legal obligation based upon case law to notify them that you're going to do that and get their permission. So what you would say is, hey, Mike or Kelly, you know, we're at the States now that we want to vet you, right? We need to gather more information because all the information about you that we know comes from you. So we want to validate that. And would you be okay if we check references? Yes. And in that process of checking references, we're going to ask around. And would you be okay if we talk to people who we are referred to in the process? So if I talked to Kelly, you know, I may ask some questions. She can ask who she is. Well, you know, talk to Mike. Right. And Mike Kelly talk to Andrew. So get permission for a variety of case law liability related things. The other thing you do is to ask for specific references that they did not offer. So if you're talking to a person who's been, say, a dean, you would say, can you give me the names of three top faculty from different schools, you know, different departments in your area, or you served on this board, you would associate editor Could you give me two names from people who are also on your board? If you served on a board as an associate editor, you know, say, could you give me two names of people who were on that board with you and you do that throughout the organization? You know, can I talk to a couple of vice presidents within your institution? The point is that you would look at their resume and look at the background and experiences they've had and who they could have or should have worked with and asked for two or more people from those groups. Now you got a list of, say, a dozen, and you say to them, I'm going to call a half dozen of those folks. So the point is, you're not going to get their witness list. The people who are going to speak well of them, regardless of the situation because they just like them. But you also get people who've witnessed their work. So for me, that's the best technique to get qualitative information in the reference process.

Andy 7:38
I think that's extremely useful for our community to hear that from somebody who has done it. And I guess the question now is, out of those 10 to 20% of the references that don't turn out great, how many of those instances have led to a candidate being disqualified because of that? Is it basically you find something out and people are done or where's it go from there?

Chris 8:01
Yeah, for me, it's a 3 to 1 ratio. If anyone has done any good work over a long period, time is likely chances they've made a mistake or they didn't get along with someone or just, you know, that's just the way life is. So I tried to have three positives to a negative rate. So you're looking for patterns. If a person says, you know, the person didn't do this well, okay, you know, that's the way life is or the person is not a good person and you're not going to get along with everyone. So you're looking for patterns. So you just have to look for more people in more instances and kind of dive in on what the issue is. And if is a 3 to 1 ratio, then you're probably in good stead 2 to 1. You may still have a question. I like to go 3 to 1.

Kelly 8:43
It's great. I actually want to circle back to the part that you said, What if you were leaving a position because you didn't get along with that manager and it was into the point of the interview process that they wanted to dig deeper and like, we need to talk to this current supervisor and you know that there's some personality conflicts, there's some there's some issues there. So would you advise a candidate to kind of be upfront and say, Hey, I'm just going to let you know that this person might not speak highly of me because of this? How does someone delicately navigate that type of conversation?

Chris 9:16
Yeah, it's it's a high stakes issue. So I think disclosing it upfront and that's why having the current and former colleagues as a group of references is important. So let's assume you are a director, you work for vice president. Hopefully you've got a good relationship with other vice presidents, right? You know, so you get a couple of peers of yours as well as a couple of peers of your supervisors position to be able to speak to your experience at the institution. Right. That's the way to kind of counter that. So you'll say, hey, you know, my boss, Paul, Paul and I have never really gotten along. It's one of the reasons why, you know, I'm looking for other opportunities. He and I have differed on this. I worked on this particular project. He didn't appreciate my way of working. And I'm concerned that he would not be fair and judicious in what he says. However, I would like to offer Paul's peer, a couple other colleagues, people who, you know, who work with me. I'm sure they will echo my perspective in our relationship and or can attest to my abilities in doing work. So I think that's the fair way of doing it. Now, of course, that's at the end of the process after you've done well and you get other references as well. So now you're disclosing that so is in context at the right time and that sort of thing. And according to research, as many as 70% of people don't trust or like their supervisor, you know, depending on which kind of surveys you're looking at. So it's not an uncommon thing right.

Kelly 10:40
This is great information. Chris, thank you.

Andy 10:42
Yeah,

Kelly 10:42
This is actually very interesting because it can be from both sides like the person interviewing, but then also the committee interviewing. Like how often are they trained to do some of the things that you talked about? Chris? Like this is fascinating to me.

Chris 10:56
And the other part I would say is when you have negative information in the process, what I try to do is to ensure that the people who are making the decision are as impartial as possible, and they rarely are. So you have to get other people involved. This is when you get your H.R. people involved, your legal people involved, your EEO people involved in how to handle negative information. Hopefully the institution has a protocol for that, right. Of how to handle negative information, the hiring supervisors self interested. And so they're not always going to see things clearly. And that's why it's so important have the committee chair or H.R. or legal or somebody else involved when there's information that that is fuzzy and we're not quite sure about. So it's getting other opinions into the mix.

MW 11:37
Just a random question. Do you ever know you're going to get a bad a bad review from somebody you're interviewing for somebody and then it turns out good, like the person's warned you, like, we don't get along. Things are not good. Just wondering.

Chris 11:51
Yeah, well, no, no, this this, this could actually be, you know, a compendium. The motivations also for supervisors who don't get along with subordinates, you know, sometimes works in your favor. It's kind of like saying, you know, Chris and I don't get along. Chris needs a reference. I give him a bad reference. He stays. So that person, you know, that person is motivated to say, yeah, you know, Chris is pretty good at, you know, X, Y and Z and leave out the things that, you know, aren't there. So that's why, you know, our advice of, you know, expanding that pool of references is so important. It gives you a 360 degree look at it, because people who want to get rid of you are not going to tell the truth. Now, the only exceptions I've seen to that is when the hiring person knows the person who's asking the reference personally, like they're internal to the institution, or they just know one another professionally. And I've seen that a couple of times. I had that happen recently. I knew a person's president from a previous life and that person said, If you're going to ask me for an official reference, here's what I'm going to say. If you want to talk, Chris And, you know, I would not hire that person, that that means that person stays on my staff. Right. But I wouldn't do that to a friend. Right. I'm just going to tell you the truth or whatever. And I've seen that many times over my career where people have those professional relationships. Right? Because if you are a psychologist, there's a community of psychologists, as it's not unlikely that people may know one another professionally. So so people will will be judicious in that situation.

Kelly 13:25
I want to encourage our listeners to read some of Chris's prior articles, cause I know you wrote an article and references, so check that out when you get a chance. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Chris, for the conversation today.

Andy 13:38
Thanks, Chris.

Chris 13:38
My pleasure.

Andy 13:39
And thank you all for listening. We look forward to talking soon.