A few weeks after joining my team – one of the senior PMs casually told me “Venkat, before joining here, I spoke to your previous team members and got very positive feedback. Only after that, I decided to join your team”
Surprisingly, PM after PM who joined my team shared with me about having made reference checks from my previous teams.
It was not unexpected.
But then it became increasingly clear that it has become so easy to find appropriate contacts and complete a reference check on a prospective manager. Nowadays almost all candidates use this tool before accepting an offer.
Thanks to Linkedin, startup communities, alumni networks, etc, the technology industry ecosystem is so connected that anyone in the industry is a 2nd-degree connection.
Keeping a good reputation as a manager therefore cannot be overrated and can make or break your speed of hiring.
But what if, sometime in the past you have been a bad manager which is probably risking your ability to hire now?
One way to handle this – During your interaction with the candidate, talk about your journey, mention your evolution from being a poor manager to a good one now and what are the lessons you learned along the way. When the candidate does a reference check, they can take any negative feedback in perspective and could discount them as outdated feedback.
