When you’re giving a reference, don’t do a job on the candidate

People will swear to the capabilities of employees for no good reason other than doing a favour, writes Terry Prone

I got a call last week from a man who had unwittingly become a referee. Not a referee of football or hurling matches. He was to be a referee for a job seeker, the point of validation. He learned he was a referee when a head-hunter rang him to say he had been named as such on a job application submitted by a woman we will call Josephine Buggins. ‘Jo’ for short.

Jo had worked for this man’s medium-sized company for six months, as a slightly-paid internee in her first year out of college, during which time she had moved between three departments, and had never worked for him directly.