Look forward to sharing any knowledge, tips and everything ops-related. I’m also looking for a mentor as I progress into a COO role in the next year. If anyone knows someone or has recommendations - do give me a shout!

Welcome, @quiet-alligator-54463. I am, and always have been, a retail enthusiast so am looking forrward to hearing about Duel!

Hi everyone, I have a quick question on recruitment / references - has anyone contacted an ex employer for a reference check without checking it/letting the candidate first?

hey @quiet-alligator-54463 - do you mean without candidate’s permission to do so?

Without him being aware

I’ve accidentally done this before - once when working at a recruitment agency, and another time our recruitment team did it at my previous startup

Is it ok?

Or should we let candidates know?

I don’t know the legalities of it, but I do think we should let the candidate know if it’s a reference that they have provided you with

And if they haven’t provided it and we just want to pick a company on our own cohort

can ask our head of talent how we go about it

If they provided - then yeah

I’ll ask 🙂

thing is, most companies have policies to only confirm the dates of employment

our head of talent says that it’s not a good practice to contact someone if the candidate haven’t listed them as a reference

Ok, thank you. That would help a tonne!

That’s what I thought too

but if you know that company personally, it doesn’t hurt to ask 🙂

Thank you

fwiw I have a slightly different view on this which is that if it’s a high impact/high profile hire you should do anything and everything to get a full picture of what they’re like. In particular if there is a gap in their CV or there’s a company they worked for briefly that they don’t talk about, it’s in your interests to find out why. I know it’s a bit controversial, and I should also caveat this by saying that I worked in New York for 2.5 years where people do things a bit differently, but I have got backdoor references on candidates that I was thinking about hiring and was really glad I did because off the back of that I didn’t hire them and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

So I guess the advice would be, if you have a way of contacting references that are not on their listed reference, and you have any doubts about the candidate you should definitely try and speak to them, however I cannot say whether this is best practice or not. I don’t think there’s a legal issue though.

At the end of the day it’s you who has to live with the consequences of making a bad hire

Thanks Kevin, good point

Had a chat with the team and my founder thought the same

We’ve asked for references from the candidate and said that we will contact some others of our own cohort (without saying who exactly)

Hello everyone, my name is Ana and I am an Operations Executive for APEXX Fintech. @quiet-orange-43581, thank you very much for this! I look forward to meeting all of you in real life 🙂

👋😄

Hi Ana!

On a side note, if anyone knows or has worked with a great EA/PA/Team Assistant - please let me know. We’re hiring one to look after our team here in London! https://duel.tech/looking-team-events-assistant/

Hi All, missed that the meetup was this week. Really bummed about it!