Paul Blume's Columns - Employee references, coming and going (Late Fall 2005)

When hiring a new employee and when giving references on a new employee, the things that you should (and should not) do are not that difficult. Regardless, if you do the wrong thing, it can lead to heartbreak and agony. And lawsuits.

Well, okay, from a lawyer’s standpoint (a trial lawyer’s, at least) the lawsuit thing sounds pretty good. But we still have some pesky obligation to try to keep you out of court. So, we’ll try.

The biggest mistake a potential employer can make is to neglect to check the references of the applicant. In many cases, there is a good reason that the person filling out the application is an applicant rather than an employee.

Of course, that’s not true of most applicants, but occasionally you’ll come across a doozy. Those are the ones who make you look like an idiot if you didn’t check references: Incompetence, lousy attitude, forgetting to show up for work, generally nuts. These are the people who, if hired, make you look as though you were asleep at the switch, and employees are a WHOLE LOT harder to get rid of than they are to hire.

Make a phone call or two. Usually the responsible administrator is the one to do this, but, prior to hiring a person, someone needs to do this, so I’m not going to tell a Board member not to do that if the responsible administrator hasn’t done it. But let’s be careful.

Don’t give your own opinion about anyone. Just ask questions. When you call for a reference, speak with the applicant’s supervisor at his previous job, if possible. Ask about the quality of the person’s work, his attitude, his promptness and attendance. Ask if there’s any reason that the former employee would not hire this person back. Don’t ask about age, race, religion, things like that. But call and ask the other stuff.

Of course, there’s sometimes the problem that the former employer won’t tell you much, if anything (and that’s often the smart thing, as I’ll explain below). When that happens, red flags go up, and you should pursue the issue further, with other people on the reference list provided by the employee and others those people might suggest. You might not get straight answers, but you probably will get, um, emanations from penumbras.

Regardless of whether you get any good, direct information, always, always check references. And don’t depend on the required criminal background checks. That’s only (eventually) going to tell you whether that applicant/employee has been convicted of a crime worse than overtime parking, not whether he’s a good employee.

As for what we do when some potential employer calls us about an applicant who is or was our employee, we must be careful. I strongly recommend that you refer, to the extent possible, all such inquiries to one person, whether it be the superintendent, personnel director or principal. That way, an inquiring potential employer won’t get possibly conflicting responses. More important, when you control responses to inquiries about one of your present or former employees, your chances of getting sued by the applicant is considerably diminished.

Sued? Yep. Although it is fairly rare, it is not unheard of that someone who gives an unflattering reference to a potential employer is sued for saying bad things about the applicant, even if those things are true. The old admonition that, “if you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all” is excellent advice. Few employers have been sued for saying nice things about an employee to a potential employer.

So, what do you say? Well, First of all, don’t lie. If you have an employee you really want to get rid of, don’t dump him off on some unsuspecting school down the road. Best way in the world to make a lifelong enemy. Remember the Golden Rule on that one.

Next, if you can’t think of anything nice to say, simply tell the inquiring potential employer that the applicant worked at your school from [beginning date] to [ending date]. It ain’t bad. And it’s true. If he asks for more, refuse. You may repeat the information; or, if true, say that it is your district’s policy (or practice) to give out only that information to potential employers.

Now, if the employee was terminated or nonrenewed, that is a matter of public record, since it requires a vote of the Board. You may either give that information and/or send a copy of the Board minutes of the dismissal. That’s a Freedom of Information Act public record. But do not go into the reasons.

If the applicant/your former employee had a hearing, and the hearing was open, the reasons for the dismissal are part of the public record, also. I don’t care. Don’t discuss that with the potential employer. Of course, if the employee was dismissed in a closed hearing, or if there was no hearing at all, then the reasons are still confidential. So, keep it to yourself.

So, yeah, I’m telling you to ask for a lot of information that you won’t give to anyone else. See how smart it makes you to read this stuff?

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