What Questions To Ask Those Who Promised To Serve As A Reference

By the jobsRmine Careers Desk · Updated May 2026

The shortlist was down to two candidates. Both had the right CV, both interviewed well, both wanted the role. The hiring manager rang two of the references on the leading candidate’s list, put the phone down 20 minutes later, and was visibly cooler about the whole thing. Nothing had been said against the candidate. Nothing had been said for them either. The job went to the other person.

Calls like that still happen, even with applicant tracking systems doing most of the screening upstream. According to SHRM’s 2024 reporting on reference checks, 87% of employers conduct reference checks before extending an offer. Those calls quietly decide who gets the job and who gets a polite rejection email. So the conversation you have with your referees before the recruiter rings them shapes what they say on the call. Have it.

Why references still matter in 2025 and 2026

The pitch for years has been that ATS software and AI screening would make reference calls obsolete. They haven’t. SHRM’s 2024 figure puts employer use of reference checks at 87%, roughly where it has sat for the last decade. A 2023 ResumeLab survey found that more than 70% of CV writers admit to lying or stretching the truth on their CV, which is exactly the kind of claim a phone call to a former line manager is good at puncturing.

Reference calls also do something software can’t. They give a recruiter five minutes of unscripted reaction. A former manager who pauses a fraction too long when asked whether they’d hire you again tells the recruiter something. So does a peer who launches into a specific story about you solving a problem at 11 pm before a client deadline. The texture of a real voice on the phone is hard to fake, and recruiters who have done this for 10 years know how to read it.

For regulated roles in the UK (financial services, healthcare, education, anything safety-critical), references are not optional. The Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory reference regime requires firms to share information about employees holding controlled functions for at least six years. If you’re moving between banks or insurers, the reference is a compliance exercise. Get it wrong, and an offer can be withdrawn after you’ve handed in your notice.

When to line up your references

Most people only think about references the week they apply for a job. That’s a mistake. The best time to ask is when you’re not job hunting, when the relationship is fresh, and when the person you’re asking has no reason to wonder why you’ve suddenly become friendly.

Make a working list of five to seven people who could speak to your work. Aim for variety: a former line manager, a peer who saw your daily output, a more senior person you delivered to, and, where relevant, a direct report. Different referees answer different questions well. Your old line manager can speak to your reliability and judgement. Your peer can speak to how you actually behave under pressure. A client or senior stakeholder can speak to the impact of your work.

When you ask, ask plainly. Try something like: ‘I’m starting to think about my next role in the next six months. Would you be comfortable being a reference for me? Happy to do the same for you whenever you need it.’ That sentence does three jobs at once. It signals you’re not desperate. It gives them an easy way out. And it opens a return offer, which most professionals appreciate.

A surprising number of people will hesitate or say no, and the reasons are usually about their own bandwidth or policy. Some employers restrict what can be confirmed beyond dates and title. Some senior people don’t want random recruiter calls. Some are just overcommitted. Treat the no as data, thank them, and move down your list.

A note about current colleagues: never list a current line manager as a reference without an explicit, agreed plan for what they will say and when they will be contacted. The risk of tipping off your employer before you’re ready is real, and most candidates list previous managers and only bring the current one in at the offer stage.

What to ask the people who agreed to be your reference

The single most useful 20-minute conversation in a job search is the one you have with each referee before the recruiter rings them. Use it to make sure they know what’s coming, what the role is, and what you’d value them mentioning. You’re briefing them so they sound confident when the call comes.

Would you hire me again?

This is the question every recruiter eventually asks, in those exact words or close to them. Most candidates assume the answer will be yes. It isn’t always. A former manager might be willing to confirm your dates and title and decline to go further. That hesitation lands as a soft no on the call.

Ask the question directly. ‘If you were hiring for a similar role today, would you hire me again? Be honest, because if the answer is anything other than a clear yes, I’d rather not put you in that position.’ A referee who can’t or won’t commit to that answer is not your referee for this role. Find a different one.

In hiring panels I’ve sat on, that single question has done more work than the rest of the call combined. A long pause, a hedged ‘well, it depends on the role’, and the conversation is essentially over.

What would you say my biggest weakness is, and how would you frame it?

A recruiter who’s done their job will ask your referee for a development area. If the referee freezes or invents something on the spot, the call goes flat. If they give a thoughtful, specific answer already paired with evidence of you working on it, that lands as honest and confident at the same time.

Brief them. Tell them which development area you’d rather they pick (everyone has more than one), and how you’ve been addressing it. ‘If they ask about something I need to work on, I’d rather you mention that I used to over-engineer plans before launching, and that I’ve been deliberately shipping rougher first drafts this year.’ That gives the referee a ready answer that protects you and stays truthful.

What do you remember me being best at?

Strong referees lead with a specific memory rather than a generic adjective. ‘She was good with clients’ is forgettable. ‘I remember the call where the client wanted us to redo a £40,000 deliverable for free, and she rebuilt the scope conversation in 20 minutes without losing the relationship’ is not.

Ask your referee what they’d point to. Refresh their memory if they need it. Send the brief by email so they have something to glance at in the 60 seconds before the call.

How would you describe my working style?

This is where culture-fit signals come from. A recruiter is listening to whether you match the team they’re hiring for. If they’re hiring for a fast-moving startup and your referee describes you as ‘thorough and careful with process’, you’ve just been moved down the list.

Talk to your referee about the role. Tell them what the team values and ask whether the angle they’re planning to take fits. There’s nothing dishonest about emphasising the side of your working style that matches the job, provided the description is accurate.

When and how would you rather be contacted?

Almost no candidate asks this, and almost every referee appreciates being asked. Some people are happy to take a quick call. Others would rather respond in writing. Some have a strict policy of only confirming basic details unless the request goes through HR. Knowing this lets you list them with the right contact details, and it stops a recruiter from leaving four voicemails on a number that gets checked once a week.

Ask for the channel, the time of day, and whether they’d prefer the request to come through their PA. Pass that on when you list them.

Is there anything you’d rather a recruiter not ask you about me?

This question feels awkward, and it repays the awkwardness in full. Maybe there’s a project that ended badly. Maybe there was a redundancy. Maybe you left a previous role on terms you’d rather not relitigate. Your referee will have their own version of that history.

By raising it first, you let them prepare a calm, neutral answer instead of being ambushed on a call. You also surface anything they were quietly worried about. Sometimes you learn that a referee you assumed was solid still has reservations they’ve never told you. Better to find out now than from a withdrawn offer.

How long have we worked together, and in what capacity?

A recruiter checking references is also checking the timeline of your CV. Get the dates and titles aligned. If you reported to this person for 14 months and you say two years on LinkedIn, that discrepancy will get flagged.

This is also the moment to clarify the seniority of the referee. A recruiter listening to your former CTO speak about you will weigh that differently from a peer who sat next to you for six months. Both are useful, provided the referee is honest about the relationship and the timeframe.

Choosing references: the test to apply to yourself

Friendship is the wrong test for picking a referee. Two things actually matter: whether the person can speak to specific evidence of your work, and whether they can articulate it clearly under pressure.

Pick people who can be specific. The best references give recruiters one concrete story they remember after the call ends. A senior person who has only seen you in meetings often can’t do this. A manager who sees your work every day usually can.

Don’t avoid the tough ones. The manager who was hardest on you, the one who actually pushed you, is often the best referee you have. They’ve seen you under real pressure. If they’re willing to vouch for you, that vouch carries more weight than a glowing reference from someone who only ever watched you do easy work.

Avoid the indirect ones. An intern you supervised for six weeks, the friend who happened to share an office, the senior leader who knows your name but not your output. These references add little and sometimes raise the obvious question: why couldn’t you find someone closer to your actual work?

Refresh the list every two years. People change roles, lose context, and become harder to reach. The reference who was excellent in 2020 may not pick up the phone in 2026.

Using LinkedIn Recommendations properly

LinkedIn Recommendations sit somewhere between a public testimonial and a private reference. They don’t replace a phone call, and they shape how a recruiter feels about you before the call ever happens. Recruiters do read them, particularly when a Recommendation describes a specific outcome rather than a personality trait.

Ask the people writing them to be specific. Vague positive language reads as filler and quietly subtracts from your profile rather than adding to it. Compare these two:

Good: ‘Prakash was a team player who got along well with the team.’

Better: ‘In late 2022, Prakash co-led a project for a logistics client where we had to rework a 30-day forecast model under a four-day deadline, with three analysts working across Bangalore, London and Toronto. He rebuilt the data pipeline, ran the new forecast, and delivered the model under budget two days early. He would be an asset to any team building under real time pressure.’

The second version is longer and harder to write, which is why it works. It gives a date, a scope, a constraint and an outcome. A recruiter reading it can picture the work.

When someone asks you to write a Recommendation for them, ask three questions before you start. What role are they applying for? What do they want emphasised? What specific project should you anchor the story on? The Recommendation you produce will be sharper, and the version they publish will sit higher on their profile because LinkedIn pushes new Recommendations through their network feed when they go live.

What recruiters actually do with references in 2026

Reference checking has changed in two ways over the last five years. Both are worth understanding before you list anyone.

Structured online tools have largely replaced the phone call at scale. Platforms like Xref, HireRight and Crosschq send referees a structured questionnaire by email, usually with a rating scale on dimensions like reliability, leadership and judgement. The referee fills it out in their own time. Recruiters get a comparable dataset across every candidate they shortlist.

That sounds clinical, and it has consequences for you. A vague reference now stands out as weaker because the rating scale forces a choice. A referee who would have given a warm, qualified reference on a call has to pick a number on a 1-to-5 scale for ‘I would hire this person again’, which compresses ambiguity into a hard answer. If your referee was a soft ‘probably’ before, they’re now an explicit 3 out of 5, sitting next to other candidates’ fives.

Recruiters who still pick up the phone increasingly work from a structured template. Schmidt and Hunter’s widely cited meta-analysis of selection methods established years ago that structured assessments predict job performance more reliably than informal conversations, and reference calls have followed the same logic. So when a recruiter rings your referee, they’re often working through a fixed list of questions. The answers get scored.

Brief your referees on the specifics. Send them the job description. Tell them which two or three skills the role is looking for. If a structured questionnaire arrives in their inbox, you want them prepared to answer the work-style and judgment questions with examples in mind rather than staring at a cold tickbox.

The short version

References still decide outcomes that ATS scores don’t. Pick the right people early, brief them honestly, and ask them the seven questions above before any recruiter does. The conversation costs you 20 minutes per referee and protects you against the silent rejection you’d never have understood otherwise.

If you’re about to start applying, build a shared note today with the five people you’d ask. Send each of them a short email this week. Don’t wait for the offer to be on the table.

For more on the rest of the offer-stage process, our guide on how to follow up after a job interview covers the days between the final interview and offer. If you’re earlier in the funnel, how to write a CV that gets through the ATS and handles the screening stage. And once the offer arrives, how to negotiate a job offer walks through the final stretch.

Frequently asked questions

How many references should I provide for a job?

Two or three is standard for most UK roles. A line manager and a peer are the usual baseline, with a third (a client, a senior stakeholder, or a second former manager) added when the role is senior or specialised. Asking for five or six references upfront looks excessive. Hold the rest of your list in reserve in case the recruiter wants more after the first call.

Can a former employer give a bad reference in the UK?

Yes, in principle. UK employers are generally not legally required to provide a reference except in regulated industries such as financial services. When they do provide one, ACAS and the CIPD make clear that the reference must be true, fair and accurate. A reference that is misleading, recklessly inaccurate, or based on discriminatory grounds can give rise to claims for negligent misstatement, defamation or discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. This is general information, not legal advice; speak to a qualified employment solicitor if you’re considering a claim.

What can a reference legally say about me in the UK?

Anything true, fair and supported by evidence. Many UK employers have moved to a ‘factual reference’ policy that confirms job title, dates of employment, and sometimes salary, and goes no further. Others provide detailed references covering performance and conduct. Either approach is legal, provided the content is accurate and the policy is applied consistently across former employees.

Should I tell my current employer I’m using them as a reference?

Only if you’ve already decided to be open about your job search, or your current manager has explicitly agreed to act as a referee. Listing a current line manager without telling them is the fastest way to a difficult conversation you didn’t choose. Most candidates list previous managers and only ask their current one at the offer stage, when they’re ready to share that they’re leaving.

Do recruiters always call references before making an offer?

Not always. Some employers make offers conditional on satisfactory references and run the checks after. Others rely on structured online questionnaires through platforms like Xref, HireRight or Crosschq and never make a phone call. In regulated industries such as financial services, references are mandatory and must cover specific compliance information for at least six years of employment history.

What if the referee I planned to use says no?

Thank them, move on, and don’t take it personally. The reasons usually have more to do with their employer’s policy or their own bandwidth than anything you’ve done. Move down your list and add a new person who knows your recent work. Treat the conversation as a small piece of information about how the relationship has shifted, then keep going.

What Questions To Ask Those Who Promised To Serve As Reference