Reference checks are an essential step in your hiring process. As someone who has conducted a significant number of them in my career, I know they can be extremely time consuming and don’t always yield the most insightful information.

However, reference checks have the potential to provide you with some of the most critical, timely, and valuable information you could ask for:  actually knowing how a candidate has performed on the job. Certainly, past performance is a strong predictor of future performance. But simply verifying employment dates and asking superficial questions will typically leave you in the cold. You need to make sure that you ask the right questions.