I Shouldn’t Have to Say This, But You Do Not Have Permission to Do Unofficial Reference Checks

I really shouldn’t have to say this, but here we are.

You do not have permission to do unofficial reference checks.

Not as a hiring manager.
Not as a recruiter.
Not internally.
Not “just a quiet call”.

And certainly not “off the record”.

Because here’s the part people keep lying to themselves about. It is never off the record. It always gets out.

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve had to actively stop enthusiastic hiring managers from doing a bit of informal backgrounding. A quick call to someone they know. A casual “what’s he really like?” conversation framed as harmless curiosity.

It isn’t harmless.

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That candidate you are discussing is usually employed. They often work for someone you know, or someone adjacent to your network. If they do not get the job, but you have let the cat out of the bag that they were exploring options, you have just introduced risk into their current role for no defensible reason.

Pause on that for a moment.

You have potentially damaged someone’s career, income, or internal standing, without their consent, and without offering them anything in return.

All because you were impatient.

There is a proper time to do reference checks. It is not mysterious. It is not negotiable. It comes immediately after you have sought, and received, the candidate’s permission to do reference checks.

Anything before that is not diligence. It is entitlement.

I have dealt with many candidates over the years whose careers were hindered, stalled, or outright derailed because of “off the record” background checks. Promotions that suddenly disappeared. Trust that quietly eroded. Questions they didn’t know they were being judged on.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth. The people who justify this behaviour often see themselves as good operators. Experienced. Street smart. They tell themselves they are just being thorough.

What they are actually doing is prioritising their own comfort over someone else’s livelihood.

There is also a commercial angle that rarely gets acknowledged. Unofficial reference checks produce low quality information. They are unstructured, biased, and heavily influenced by the relationship between the people speaking. You are far more likely to hear opinion than evidence, and far more likely to reinforce existing assumptions than challenge them.

So you are taking an ethical shortcut and getting worse data.

That is not clever hiring.

If you want to assess risk properly, do it transparently. Tell the candidate what stage you are at. Ask their permission. Explain who you want to speak to and why. Give them agency in the process.

If that feels inconvenient, that is your problem, not theirs.

So yes, this is a wagging finger moment.

Stop it.

Because good hiring is not just about finding the right person for your business. It is about behaving in a way that deserves trust, both from the people you hire and the people you do not.

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