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Ask a candidate to name their previous boss and spell their name. This signals you'll verify references, triggering honesty about accountability and revealing whether they're coachable. It feels invasive but works.
Ask a candidate to name their previous boss and spell their name. This signals you'll verify references, triggering honesty about accountability and revealing whether they're coachable. It feels invasive but works.
So step 1, what we're going to do is we're just going to ask very simply, so what was your boss's name? Great. Pat. Super. Pat what? Pat Smith. Great. Awesome. And can you spell that for me? Is that S-M-I-T-H? S-M-Y-T-H-E? Ah, great. Pat Smith. S-M-I-T-H. Thank you. Super. That's step 1. Now, this is the part that tends to weird people out a little bit because some people feel that it's very invasive. Well, I can't ask them what their boss's name was. To which I will very nicely reply, um, yes you can, and in fact, yes you must, because you're about to decide whether or not You want to spend more waking hours with this person than you spend with your spouse, for most people. This is not the time to play coy. This is not the time to not be invasive. You need to be invasive. And frankly, it is well within the boundaries to ask what their previous boss's name was and to spell it. Now, why do we ask about the spelling? It flips a switch in the candidate's brain that says, 'Oh, even if I don't give this person as a reference, they're going to track him down.'
