A rating questionnaire for job references

Nicholas Albery

A better standard way of asking for job references is called for. Ex-Employers rarely feel obliged to present a balanced picture of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses when giving job references, and much reading between the lines has to go on.

My proposal is that, as well as anything they cared to add by way of a letter, it could become standard practice to send ex-employers a questionnaire to fill in asking them to rate the ex-employee from 0 to 100, on a number of questions, such as 'how punctual was the person?' 'how fast at doing their work?' 'how creative?' and so on. Or for some aspects there could be a point on a spectrum to choose from with both ends representing undesirable extremes, for instance 'extremely introvert?' at one end to 'extremely extrovert?' at the other.

At the top of the questionnaire it would say: 'Please do not give the identical rating to any two questions, and please do not give the top score to any item.'

I think employers in such a case would then indicate by slightly lower marks any area where they had been unhappy about performance.

Nicholas Albery, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA (tel 0181 208 2853; fax 0181 452 6434; e-mail: <rhino@bbcnc.org.uk>).

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