Do employers really look for a reference when hiring an employee these days?  With social networking, and websites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, there is so much information about people readily available to potential employers that, quite possibly, references are redundant.  For the human resource department, they just want to make the phone call to ‘check off the box’ but do they really listen to anything the former employer has to say?

Although this may largely seem the case, an article by Fiona Smith in the Financial Review, shows that this isn’t true in all situations.  One of the biggest international technological companies in the world was found to knock out a top contender in the early stages of recruiting because he didn’t have any recommendations on LinkedIn.  This company was Google.  Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to push references aside when Google and probably many other international companies still hold them to be of upmost importance.

Sally