What Are References For?

Servants, mostly. Harsh but true. Meant to keep the downstairs crew firmly in their place. For hundreds of years, the most potent threat wielded by masters was the phrase: 'discharged without reference.' Death-knell for the servant. In a small community where everyone knew the pecking order, no one would hire a person of lowly stature who had been let go without a reference.

Astonishingly, it's still a common practice. All this talk of digital disruption and innovation, entrepreneurial value creation, virtues of risk-taking, and yet ... a medieval system of mobility control continues to exist. Worth a closer look, don't you think?

Do as we say, not as we do

Paternal management systems tend to reward loyalty. Based on the old grace-and-favour mindset, where the powerful offer the weak protection in return for unquestioning obedience, they are designed to preserve a hierarchical order. In times past, the natural order of things was indeed believed to have come from the Divine. 'Why are we doing it like this? Because God said so.' Both ambition and dissent were tightly tracked, subject to extreme punishment if found to be 'beyond one's station'. 

In our secular age, this translates into something a bit more cynical. To get a good reference, the employee must keep the line manager happy. Manage upward, so to speak. As long as the boss is pleased, who cares what's really going on? Over a period of time, this morphs into a schizophrenic culture. One set of truths to be reported to the management, and another set - less pleasant, perhaps - to be withheld. The emperor can parade naked with impunity. As long as references are at stake, no one dares point out the obvious. 

Only true up to a point

There is a cut-off point in the hierarchy. C-suite candidates generally seem to be exempt from the ignominy of references. The great and the good. Captains of industry. The tacit assumption all along has been that the higher up the chain of corporate command one sits, the more infallible one's conduct will be. A bit like in Robert Altman's Gosford Park, there are two sets of rules. For household staff, substitute business analysts, marketing assistants, computer programmers, sales managers, financial accountants, supply chain consultants, among countless others, who need to prove they are worthy of employment. For the few in the top left of the photo, substitute executive management, who would be affronted at the very thought of reference checking for themselves.

Please don't get me wrong. I have nothing against executive management. Profoundly grateful for the good men and women in positions of power, with the authority to make key decisions, who've been my mentors and role models. This is not so much a case of sour grapes as defunct paradigms. 

References are just a sad leftover of a profoundly broken way of doing things.

They do have one clear use though. For recruitment agencies, insisting on a reference is the easiest way to grow a network. Imagine a short list of seven candidates for a relatively senior role, for which each candidate has been asked to submit two references from individuals higher up the chain of command. The numbers add up nicely, no? 

References vs Peer Reviews

Completely different kettle of fish. Asking fellow professionals for a review of the candidate's work is a much more effective mechanism for establishing skill and talent. In fact, take it one step further and actually have the output assessed independently by an industry expert. That's where the very good will get sorted from the good enough. Quick personal story. One of my undergraduate tutors had a rule for awarding the highest grade to a written paper. "After reading the paper, only if I say 'gee, wish I had written that', will I give it an A." Imagine my joy when, after many agonising attempts, I landed my first A in his class!

Shaking things up

Something exciting is already afoot. Ambition and dissent, rather than being punished, are being nurtured and channeled. The fear of upsetting a social order, where power is concentrated among the few who need shielding from the ire of the many, is being replaced by a sharing economy. Untold thousands are giving up their weekends and spare time to write code that they then make available for others to use, completely free of charge. Post a question on the relevant knowledge-sharing portal and someone inevitably will take out time from their day to answer it. Of course people will get things wrong, and lawsuits will still be filed for theft of intellectual property and violation of patents. But, in a connected digital world, your interactions with the hive mind are worth far more than a 'reference' from your current (or ex) line manager. So go on. Ask that question; submit that proposal; take that risk that might disrupt the status quo.