I don’t call references anymore. First of all, a potential employee will only give you references that they know will give a positive review. I’ll never forget the first employee I hired. After searching through thousands of resumes, I finally found a great candidate with a good sense of design. She gave me a list of references. The last one I called was really talking her up. Apparantly she had completed some freelance work for him that he was very happy with. There was something about that conversation that was odd but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
I hired her and dumped my life savings of $10,000 into an office, furniture and electronics. Considering I was only 24 years old, it was a pretty decent investment. The day after her computer arrived she called to say that she wouldn’t be starting on Monday as scheduled because one of her references had offered a better salary than I could afford. It had taken 3 weeks of searching to find her and now I had to start from square one again while completing all of the work that was on her schedule.
HAS SOMETHING LIKE THIS HAPPENED TO YOU? I’D LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT!
