Your Reference Checks Mostly Confirm What You Hoped. Here Is How to Make Them Tell You Something.
You are the person running hiring for a company of 50 to 200, and references are the last box before the offer. You call the two or three contacts the candidate handed you, hear that they were great, and sign. That call almost never changes your mind, and that is exactly the problem: a check that only ever confirms is not really a check. The good news is that a short, deliberate reference call can still tell you something real, without more of your time and without stepping outside the law.
Reference checking is still nearly universal. The large majority of employers, around 87% in the SHRM’s work on reference checks, contact professional references before they finalise a hire. Yet the same research keeps landing on an uncomfortable point: most of those calls struggle to get past confirming dates of employment and a job title. We do the step because skipping it feels reckless, not because it usually tells us anything we did not already believe.
That is not a failure of judgment on anyone’s part. On a small team you are running the whole process yourself, the reference call lands at the busiest moment, right before an offer, and by then you want a green light, not a complication. The result is a ritual that reassures more than it informs. This piece looks at why the standard reference check is such a thin signal, what French law actually allows, and how to run the call so it earns its place.
Why the Standard Reference Check Tells You So Little
Three things quietly drain the value out of the usual reference call, and none of them is about how good you are at making it.
- The candidate picks the referees. Nobody hands you a contact who will sink them. You are calling a curated shortlist, so the base rate of the answer is set before you dial. A warm review from a chosen referee is close to no information at all.
- It happens after you have decided. When the call comes at the very end, you are no longer gathering evidence, you are looking for permission to do what you already want to do. Anything short of a red flag reads as confirmation, and mild hesitations get rounded up to a yes.
- The questions invite opinions, not facts. “Was she good at her job?” can only ever produce a polite adjective. Former managers are also wary of saying anything that could come back on them, so a vague, positive answer is the safe default for everyone involved.
This is also why some employers have started going around the provided list entirely, quietly calling people the candidate never named. We looked at that shift, and why it is riskier than it sounds, in why employers are quietly calling references you did not list. The better answer is not to sneak around the candidate. It is to make the reference check you are allowed to run actually count.
What French Law Actually Lets You Do
Before you improve the call, get the frame right, because in France a reference check is not a free-for-all. The candidate has to know it is happening. You can only gather information that is directly relevant to the job and their ability to do it, and doing it behind their back counts as unfair collection of personal data, the kind of thing a candidate can raise with the labour courts or the CNIL, the French data protection authority.
Two rules matter most in practice, and both are covered well in this guide to the law on reference checking:
- Tell the candidate first. Reference checking has to be transparent. The candidate should know who you plan to contact and be able to agree to it. Surprise calls are not just bad manners, they are legally exposed.
- Never call the current employer without explicit agreement. Most candidates are still in a job. Contacting their current company without clear, specific consent can expose the person and put you in the wrong. If they are employed, work from past managers they release to you.
None of this weakens the check. It just means the useful version of it is the one you run openly, with the candidate’s agreement, on people who actually worked with them. That is also the version that stands up if a hiring decision is ever questioned later.
How to Make the Call Worth Making
The fix is not more calls or a longer script. It is a sharper one. Treat the reference check as a way to test a specific doubt and to hear concrete behaviour, not as a popularity poll. Three moves do most of the work.
Go in with a question you actually need answered
By the time you reach references you usually have one or two real uncertainties: can this person run a project without close supervision, will they hold up under a demanding manager, is the gap in the CV what they say it is. Decide that before you call, and aim the conversation there. A reference check that sets out to confirm a hire learns nothing. One that sets out to resolve a doubt can.
Ask about behaviour, not for a verdict
Opinion questions get you adjectives. Behaviour questions get you stories you can weigh for yourself. The shift is small and it changes what you hear.
| Low-signal question | What to ask instead |
|---|---|
| “Was she good at her job?” | What was she responsible for, and how did that change while you worked together? |
| “Would you rehire him?” | Tell me about a time the work got hard. What did he actually do? |
| “What are her weaknesses?” | What did she need support on, and how did she take feedback on it? |
| “Is he a team player?” | How did he handle a disagreement with a colleague or a manager? |
These are the same instincts that make an interview useful: press for real examples of past work rather than impressions. We make the case for that at the interview stage in how structured interviews sharpen small-team decisions, and the reference call is simply the last place to apply it.
Take lukewarm seriously
The single most useful signal a reference call produces is rarely a scandal. It is hesitation. A referee who slows down, hedges, or answers a warm question with a careful “he was fine” is telling you something, and the end of the process is exactly where we are most tempted to ignore it. You do not have to treat a lukewarm reference as a veto. You do have to treat it as a real data point and go back and check it against everything else you know, rather than rounding it up because the offer letter is already drafted.
Where the Reference Check Belongs
A reference check is a poor way to make a hiring decision and a good way to confirm one. The difference is how much evidence you are already carrying when you pick up the phone. If the call is the first structured read you have on the candidate, it is being asked to do work it cannot do. If you have built a consistent picture across sourcing, screening, and interviews, the reference becomes a targeted final check on the one or two things you still cannot see: exactly the job it is good at.
That is the case we make more fully in why you should evaluate candidates across the whole process rather than leaning on any single stage. When your read on someone is spread evenly across the process, no one step, the interview, the reference, or the probation period, has to carry the whole decision.
This is the logic Kynto is built on. It scores every candidate against the criteria you set and keeps the reasoning visible from the first CV to the final round, so by the time you make a reference call you already know the specific doubt you want it to settle. The judgment stays yours. What changes is that the call stops being a formality and becomes a question with a point.
Key Takeaways
- The standard reference check is weak because the candidate picks the referees, it happens after you have decided, and it asks for opinions instead of facts. Most calls only confirm what you already hoped.
- In France the check has to be transparent and relevant to the job, and you cannot contact a current employer without explicit agreement. Run it openly, on past managers the candidate releases to you.
- Aim the call at a specific doubt, ask about behaviour rather than for a verdict, and take hesitation seriously. A reference confirms a decision best when the rest of your process has already made it.
FAQ
Do I need the candidate’s permission to check references in France?
In practice, yes. A reference check has to be transparent and limited to information relevant to the job. The candidate should know who you intend to contact, and checking behind their back can be treated as unfair collection of personal data. Contacting a current employer in particular requires their explicit agreement.
What should I actually ask a reference?
Ask about behaviour, not for a verdict. Instead of “was she good?”, ask what she was responsible for, how she handled a hard moment, and what she needed support on. Concrete stories you can weigh yourself are far more useful than a polite adjective, and they are easier for a former manager to give honestly.
The reference was lukewarm but not negative. What do I do with that?
Treat it as real information, not noise. Hesitation is often the most honest signal a reference gives, and the end of the process is where it is easiest to explain away. You do not have to reject the candidate over it, but you should check it against the rest of what you know before you sign, rather than rounding it up to a yes.
The reference check is not the place to find out whether someone can do the job. It is the place to confirm a decision you have already built the evidence for, and to settle the one doubt you could not settle any other way. Run it openly, aim it at that doubt, and it stops being a box you tick on the way to an offer. If you want the rest of your process to carry its share of that weight, see how Kynto helps small teams hire on evidence.
A reference confirms a decision best when the rest of your process has already made it. Kynto scores every candidate against your criteria and keeps the reasoning visible, so the final call has a point.
See how Kynto works for HR teams