A company fired an employee for stealing from the register. A competitor hired them anyway without checking references, and they stole again. Most companies skip thorough reference checks, relying only on candidates' own contacts instead of calling people who actually worked with them.
So one time we had an employee that we caught stealing, literally like taking money out of the till and putting it into their own pocket. And we did what you're supposed to. We fired them, escorted them out the building. Ideally, in those situations, you could call the police or the FBI or somebody to do something about it. They don't. That's just kind of the way law enforcement works in America. There's so much fraud that just gets unprosecuted because it's really hard. The police don't do it. So we escort the person out the building. We fire them. See you later. Fired with cause. All that kind of stuff. We have proof of everything happening. You look up 3 months later and this happened to us. And suddenly that employee that you just fired for stealing is working at a competitor. They pop up one day, they steal from you, and 3 months later the competitor hires them. So you have to ask yourself, how did this competitor end up hiring somebody who's a thief? Like straight up a thief? And I'll tell you the very straightforward way that it happens, which is everybody in our company knew this person stole, by the way. But it's clear this competitor did nothing to reach out to folks and find out how this person's job performance had been. They just made assumptions that what this employee, the thief, had said to them inside of their interviews and the fact that they had worked for us meant they must be a good employee to hire. And whatever story this person said— and remember, they're a liar and a cheat, they stole from us, no ifs, ands, or buts about it— whatever this person told to them in the interview, the other employer, they just believed it at face value. They didn't go do any diligence on it. They didn't see if it was true. They didn't call any references. It's going to burn them. That's what's going to happen. There's a way to avoid this happening. Pretty straightforward. It's a technique as old as time. It involves calling references. And references are people that have worked with somebody in the past, done business with them, and can basically attest to either corroborate or refute what the person is telling you in the interview. My experience is that way too many companies shirk this step, and I understand why they do it. You get through this whole interview process, the person tells you exactly what you want to hear, the resume looks great, and you are ready to hire them. It's been a long journey and you don't want to be getting bad news. And I understand why people skimp on this reference checking part, but the reality is it's probably the most important part of the interview, period. More important than what they tell you in the room, more important than what their resume looks like, more important than how much money they're asking for is what is their actual track record in the real world? And is what they told you in that interview room true or not? And so the solution is this idea of reference checking. And there's two types of reference checking. There's front channel and back channel. Front channel, pretty straightforward. Those are the names you ask, you know, the actual candidate for, and you say, give me the names of some people that can speak to your stuff. And they give you these references. And look, they're hit and miss, right? Because nobody's going to give you a reference that's going to say bad things about them. But there's the other type of reference, which is back channel referencing, which is identifying people that were not given to you as names from these individual candidates. And you call those folks and reach out to them and see what they have to say. Here's the secret with all of These folks, high-performing employees and high-performing people, have a ton of people that will say great things about them. The people that are middle of the road or not that good or bad people, you won't get calls back. And this is where there's like just such a huge opportunity. And this gap that I see over and over again is companies are not doing this. They don't go through and do the hard work to make sure they can get somebody that's a good person. And ultimately, like, you end up with kind of what we ended up with, which is somebody who's a thief. I feel sad for these other companies that end up with them, but it also says something about the quality of those companies. In the end, you got to do this homework and you got to make reference checking a a huge part of what it is to vet and bring on great people. And they're hard to find. I mean, frankly, they are. But, um, it's all worth it. And it's hard work, so you got to do it. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks for being here. And, uh, call References. It'll save your life, promise.
