h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you had a reference to give for someone who's got some good points but has a fair few dodgy ones too - where would your loyalties lie?

To the Truth with capital 'T', to your ex-colleague/employee/even friend, or to the potential employer and someone who'll be in your shoes working with this person?

Waz

[Disclaimer, any resemblance in this post to fact is purely coincidence - I don't currently have anyone wanting references!]

I'm sorry, it'd have to be truth. Unless I really wanted them to get the job so they were out of my hair!

No, seriously, truth. No one should be hired on just references merit (or non-merit) though. I feel references are just used to ensure that someone wasn't telling porkies about their past...

i would be truthful about their good points and be diplomatic about anything else or gloss over it ...because the person may be different in a another environment.no one is perfect.

I agree, it has to be [T]ruth - even if somewhat couched in opaque language. I always try to be truthful, because I dread to receive false references for potential employees. *cough* I have been known to call and bawl out the author of a reference that was obviously outright blollxation just to get rid of someone It is a system based on trust between employers, and where I am not stupid enough to take a reference entirely on face value, I do get rather miffed if there are outright untruths on it and I do tend to call those ones up

If it would rid me off my bully colleague ? I'd tell them what they's want to hear

No, I think it's important to stay as objective/neutral as possible, and state the truth without highlighting the flaws if possible.

I think if it was a friend, i'd do the same as Tabs, and concentrate on their good points. While not actively lieing, i wouldn't be brutally truthful either.
You know how polititians can answer all the questions without actually answering the one you asked?

If it was somebody i thought was a liability, and it was applying for a position where they could do real harm, i'd just not give a reference at all.

From memory, when either obtaining references, or being a referre, you have to agree or ask the referree. So if it's someone you are unsure about, just say you'd prefer not to be thier referree.

One of the few times I ever needed a reference I had to have an accademic referee, so picked th emost recent, head of dept professor and who was my supervisor on my dissertation... He agreed, then never sent them the reference, I was told they'd never recieved the reference and then of course it couldn't go any furhter Pity we can't always choose to have reliable or competant referees; when it is being specifically asked for, E.G., most recent employer, or most recent accademic referee etc

Well, the original question says it all. Who was it who said "If it came to betraying my friend or betraying my country, I hope I'd have the guts to betray my country"?

RF

E.M. Forster! Do I win points?

A little caution is needed if writing a negative reference, there can be legal implications if the employee doesn’t get the job based on a reference given.
Give a fair and balanced account of the employees performance etc, also ensure any gripes or negative aspects you include in the reference, have previously been discussed with the employee.
Stick to facts.

Requests for academic references do tend to appear in a big flood from dozens of people all at the same time. So they can take a little while to get, er ... processed

(When I get the reminder e-mail, that means I can say something nice about initiative and persistence in the reference itself!)

Perhaps because most of the references I write are for people going into the full-time job market for the first time, I do accentuate the positive in a slightly truth-stretchy way, but only up to a point. I haven't had to do it that often, but if I can't write someone a mostly positive reference, I do chicken out and tell them they need to ask someone else.

Awards 2 points to Trin Tragula.

RF

Ah, the heck with it, it's a bank holiday! Have *3* points!

I could have sent him a reminder Email I guess... but somehow I think it might have gone the way of the 100 plus unanswered Emails I sent him prior to that over the two years he didn't contact me or let me know if he'd looked at my submitted thesis I've only written a reference once for someone and did what my bestest referee did for me; wrote it, then gave it to the person to look at before I sent it off...

Yay! Oo, that's a lot of points

I have heard horror stories like that one before, 2legs Far too many of them, in fact.

Yeh, I spent well over £3K to do my Masters degree, As far as I'm concerned I finished it in 2001, my certificate came a couple weeks ago....

It's just a shame you can't add them to your Phootball team, eh, Trin?

Dangnabbit!

It has got a lot more regulated in recent years and a good job too, but supervision of dissertations and theses used to be on a more or less make it up as you go along basis: I've met more than one person whose supervisor pretty much disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving them in limbo

:as was the case with my lodger, he's a finished (pretty much PhD thesis, and right at the end of his time doing it (hence why its pretty much finished), his supervisor leaves, and he can't submit it; there is only one other person in the cuntry who could be supervisor, but the uni wants something like £5K just so that he can hand in what is a very finished piece of PhD thesis and get a certificate.... he's already spent more than he had on doing the PhD in the first place, yet couldn't get any money or anything back for the fact they didn't complete their part of the bargen I was* ment* to go on and do a PhD myself, everyone at the universitys I studied at wanted me too, esp from my undergraduate degree (where I still have the highest mark ever awarded percentage wise for an undergrad in the biology/lifesciences), but the whole experiance has just put me off totally... so Instead I remain unemployable