You're interviewing someone for a position at your company. You remember working with that person years ago, and you were unimpressed. Maybe it was the jerk factor, maybe it was the way he didn't quite finish work, or maybe it was her perfume. Whatever it was, you were not excited about the candidate then, and you would like to avoid working with the candidate in the future. What do you do?
Tell the hiring manager. Explain with examples. “Back 10 years ago, when the candidate and I worked at SmallerCo, I was unimpressed by these things.” (Explain the things. If it's not finishing, explain what you thought done meant and what the candidate did.) “When you check references, can you please check on this?”
The hiring manager should then ask the references, “Can you give me an example of a time the candidate did a great job finishing something?” and “Can you give me an example of a time the candidate had trouble finishing work?” and “How often do you think the candidate was great at finishing and how often did the candidate have trouble?” (Change this question to be the issue concerning you.)
You should let your manager know about your reservations–that's the unintentional reference part. But you should make allowances for people having changed over time.
This is a sticky one for me. I have been the victim on several occasions of someone giving an unintentional reference about me. When I learned of it – often months and years later – I learned that the “Oh I’ve worked with Dwayne before, and…” was untrue, a biased opinion, based on ignorance, etc.
I someone comes to the hiring manager with “Oh I’ve worked with Dwayne before, and…” I think the hiring manger should reply
“Are you willing to sit with Dwayne and me and discuss this? If not, I will forget what you told me.”
Ten years is an “eternity” in life and in business making this a problem for the potential candidate as well as the unintentional reference [even if the reasons for their lack of excitement about reuniting with an old co-worker are more tangible than “not liking their perfume”]. Unless this former co-worker has done something grossly inappropriate [see http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2644995/23026420%5D then given the ten year span some kind of change is more than likely. If however, these two people were working together in the very recent past, that might be another story but even then I’d say step carefully. The best reason of all to be careful is that today’s co-worker could be tomorrow’s employer.
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