Getting references is a faff

[equationgirl]

There was a court case about it. Ex employer gave a negative reference. Employment offer was revoked for that reason. And the job seeker took it to court and won. Obviously they can still say what they want, but certain companies might be cautious about it.

There was indeed a court case. Referee took it upon themselves to give incorrect information and the candidate had the job offer revoked. The referee was deemed to have overstepped, iirc they phoned the new employer and gave an unsolicited reference.

It's not illegal per se to give a negative reference so long as it can be factually backed up, For example, if someone had been a poor timekeeper.

Most employers will now only confirm that an employee worked there from A to B, had X sick days over Y time period, that sort of thing. I've given personal references over the years.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Any reference request that we receive has to be forwarded to HR. No-one else is allowed to give them, in case we say the wrong thing!

 

[ouirdeaux]

To get my current job it was relatively easy to confirm my years of servitude at a previous workplace, but I had a devil of a time getting a personal reference. As I am old, many of the people I know are retired, and although two friends of mine had had eminently respectable positions, they no longer had a corporate email address (it was specified that retirees were acceptable, but personal email addresses weren't, which rather ruins it). The helpful HR bod suggested my doctor, but he hadn't seen me more than once in the past decade; I've had a dentist refuse to sign my passport on the reasonable grounds that he couldn't remember me from a year back, let alone five. Eventually I found a relative youngster, who works at a university and is used to the drill.