Do potential employers "have a chat" with previous employers?

grundie

I know this may sound like a subject that has been discussed before, but my situation is a bit different.

I moved to Dublin from Derry last year to be with my fiance. I searched around for development jobs and was offered on with a small software house. The pay was below average for my skills and experience, and actually below the Dublin average. But I liked the look of the firm and I just needed a job in Dublin, so I took it.

Six months after starting I hated the place. The owners kept taking on new work, even though they were short at least five developers and couldn't recruit any due to their low salaries. So my workload kept increasing. Also some of the products they developed were of a lower quality than what the clients expected. When a client told me they were going to drag me through the courts because of an application I didn't even work on (nothing to do with me, I just happened to take the call that day), I decided the time was right to move on.

My resignation letter was terse, but not rude. I explained my concerns about poor software and low salaries. I had a suspicion that the company would one day get sued and I didn't want to be there when it happened..

When I handed in the letter, the owner dropped an big-time f-bomb on me. He really was not happy. In light of this I refused to work my notice period. Two days later, another member of staff called my fiance and used similar language to describe me. Seems my resignation left them even more short staffed.

Now I am looking for a new position, but I suspect some of the companies I have approached may have made informal inquiries to my former employer. I know this would probably be illegal under the Data Protection Act, unless I was asked for permission. However, at two interviews things have been said that sounded alarm bells. One interviewer admitted to being a good friend of the the lead developer in the company in question. Another mentioned a obscure phrase I used in my resignation letter in relation to a question about what I would do if the company were to make a major mistake in developing a product.

Could this really be happening? I know if I were recruiting someone I would be sorely tempted to call a previous employer for a quick chat before interviewing the candidate. Despite its illegality, I just feel that some companies must do it.

I have seen a solicitor who has said if it is happening it would be illegal, but proving it is next to impossible.

I have been advised to remove all traces of my previous employer from my CV. I've been advised omission is not the same as lying. But, I was quite proud of some of the work I did there and I would like to mention it.

Can anyone offer me any advice?

Should I remove the entry from my CV?
Should I explicitly tell potential employers not to contact my previous employer?
Is there anything else I can do?

padser

It's called checking peoples references. Generally a pretty standard part of recruiting to be honest. Most companies before they make an offer ask premission to check with previous employers.

When the questions comes up 'what were doing for the last 6 months' and you 'omit' to tell them about your employment in that company - its called lying.

grundie

padser wrote: »

It's called checking peoples references. Generally a pretty standard part of recruiting to be honest. Most companies before they make an offer ask premission to check with previous employers.

I understand that checking references is normal, but I was under the impression that I had to explicitly grant permission before my potential employer could get in touch with my previous one.

What really matters to me is that I want to be sure my previous employer is not bad mouthing me. I did work that got them some big contracts and I would like to get credit for it.

I should have also added that I am upfront with interviews about why I left my previous position. My usual explanation is "I had ethical concerns about the way they did business". I know you shouldn't bad mouth previous employers in an interview, but sometimes you have no choice but to be totally frank if you want to avoid being dishonest.

Beano

i think the OP has just found out how small the software development community in Dublin really is.

leeroybrown

The typical thing to do here is to get a friend to ring them saying that you have applied for a job with some imaginary software company and ask them a few questions.

Also, I'd strongly suggest dropping the "I had ethical concerns about the way they did business" line. Interviewers would quite reasonably wonder if your 'ethics' and their 'profit' could co-exist and it'll make them question your motives. That's not being up front about it, it's just a weak cop-out. If I needed to explain it then just say that you'd prefer not to go into too much detail about a previous employer but that your position had become untenable and that you eventually had to leave after multiple attempts on your part to improve the situation.

Explaining away not working your notice will be difficult regardless of the situation.

EDIT - And I forgot to add that I'd be careful what I said as a statistically significant percentage of the Dublin based software development community are probably registered on Boards and posts here turn up at the top of Google searches within hours...

grundie

leeroybrown wrote: »

The typical thing to do here is to get a friend to ring them saying that you have applied for a job with some imaginary software company and ask them a few questions.

Also, I'd strongly suggest dropping the "I had ethical concerns about the way they did business" line. Interviewers would quite reasonably wonder if your 'ethics' and their 'profit' could co-exist and it'll make them question your motives. That's not being up front about it, it's just a weak cop-out. If I needed to explain it then just say that you'd prefer not to go into too much detail about a previous employer but that your position had become untenable and that you eventually had to leave after multiple attempts on your part to improve the situation.

My own preference was to say something like "I felt that if I continued working there, then I would be involved in a legal situation that had nothing to do with me". And possibly also mentioning the low salary. However, all the advice I've had so far has been to mention the ethical line and avoid being specific so as to avoid making direct criticisms.

EDIT - And I forgot to add that I'd be careful what I said as a statistically significant percentage of the Dublin based software development community are probably registered on Boards and posts here turn up at the top of Google searches within hours...

I'm well aware of that, certain identifying features of the matter have been deliberately omitted.

board om

Here are a few pointers that might help.

First of all, if you are sending your CV to companies and recruitment agencies and you are not currently working, a lot of them will check your references before doing anything with you. It has become a standard practice in recent years. Basically if someone isn’t working and they haven’t been travelling it sets off alarm bells so they will check you out first.

Secondly, if someone in a company you apply to knows someone in your old company and they have a good relationship, you can bet 100% that they will ask them about you. A large telecoms company I used to recruit for did it with every candidate I sent them, and I couldn’t do anything about it. Basically if the candidate got on well in their last employer this company would interview them, if they didn’t get on well the company would just say thanks but no thanks. Not even an interview. I had a few candidates who were good workers but left their last employer on bad terms and it was near impossible to get them work in the same industry. Some of them had to get out of an industry for a few years until their name was forgotten.

Next, for Gods sake stop bad mouthing your previous employer in interviews. Even the ethical part. When you go for an interview EVERYTHING about your last employer was great. You loved every minute working there and you only left for career progression. You are no longer working there so forget about them and their business practices. No matter how you feel about your ex employer just shut up and keep it to yourself. If anyone asks you, you loved working there, the people were great to work with, and the workload was great.

Lastly, please remember in future that your letter of resignation is just the date you are finishing, thank you for the opportunity, and wish them all the best. Don’t ever go into details about your problems with the company. And especially not to say things like you are afraid they are going to be sued or they may go bankrupt. As I already said you are not going to be working there anymore so that doesn’t matter. I don’t mean to sound harsh but that was a very silly and extremely unnecessary resignation letter, and it is most likely what has got you into the situation you are in now.

I hope this helps. Sorry again if it sounds harsh but I think you need the truth in situation like this. When you are doing interviews remember that less is more. In other words just answer the questions and go into as little detail about your previous employer as possible. If they ask then talk about the work you did, not the customers who threatened to sue. Just talk about the good stuff, never the bad. In interviews nobody wants to hear negativity. If they tell you that you are going to have to work naked and that you will be sharing a desk with a Charles Manson, you smile and say that will be great and you are looking forward to working with him. And then ask will he be naked too because you feel that is something you haven’t any experience in yet but you would really like to try it. If you get what I am saying, it is positive all the way, nobody likes a moaner. The way they see it is if you are going to talk about your ex employer in that way, then what are you going to say about them? An example I will give you is a few years ago I did an interview for a company and I really wanted the job. And the 2 guys interviewing me were throwing every scenario possible at me to try and knock me off balance. In the end I had agreed to work a 12 hour day with no salary and commission only. Now I wasn’t really agreeing to this. What they were basically saying was if they told me I was going to be working for free and that it would be a 12 hour day, would I still like to work there, and of course I said even under those conditions I would still love to work there and that I would actually find working for free a challenge. They were only taking the pi** out of me but it showed me to be positive all the way and it showed I would do what ever was needed to succeed in the role. In the end I got the job. Funnily enough I ended up hating working there but I didn’t know that at the time so what could I do.

Anyways, good luck with the job hunt and i hope this helps.

board om

another quick point, if the candidate isnt working then the recruiter or HR person may google your name or check out your facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, etc. so if you have a big "i hate my job" up on one of these sites it may be seen. so just to let you know that google and social networks sites are checked.

light123

Hi,
I would like your advice Board Om. I'm in a bit of a similar situation. I'm 35 and haven't worked for the last 4. During this time I was looking a lot but still
nothing. I want to work very much and want to get back into IT doing support in some way. I understand companies and recruitments that stay away from me in any way. But I have had interview, some go well, some not.
I cannot a junior role as I am too over qualified and can't get the work near
my abilities as I don't have relevant/ recent experience.
What do I do? Apart from just keep going...
Is there anyone out there who needs someone experienced and enthusastic person who wants very much to work.

with regards the OP, have two CVs one with and one without the recent problem. Send both out to different places agencies. For the one without you were away. See what the reaction is. And really next time hold yourself before you jump.

light

the_syco

light123, do a CompTIA in Network+, and apply to HP tech support. Lying is bad, but forgetting that you did a 1.1 degree in Computer Science (for example), and a masters in the jedi Force may help you. They can be "added" into your CV 6 months down the line when you go for a promotion

board om

light123 wrote: »

Hi,
I would like your advice Board Om. I'm in a bit of a similar situation. I'm 35 and haven't worked for the last 4. During this time I was looking a lot but still
nothing. I want to work very much and want to get back into IT doing support in some way. I understand companies and recruitments that stay away from me in any way. But I have had interview, some go well, some not.
I cannot a junior role as I am too over qualified and can't get the work near
my abilities as I don't have relevant/ recent experience.
What do I do? Apart from just keep going...
Is there anyone out there who needs someone experienced and enthusastic person who wants very much to work.

Hey there,

I am not sure if I misunderstood your post or not, is it 4 months or 4 years since you last worked? If it is 4 months then that isn’t too difficult to get around. But 4 years would be a bit trickier.

If it has been 4 years then an idea might be do a course first to get you back up to date. It would show you have an interest in what you are doing and also show that even at 35 you are still looking to learn new things and that you like to keep up to date with technology. My preference would be a FAS course for a few reasons. The main reasons being that they are free, they pay you while you are doing them, in some cases there is work placement at the end of them, and best of all they are free. Even if it is a course in something you have done already it doesn’t matter, it is more to show what you are willing to do. But if you can learn something new along the way all the better. Have a look through the available courses and once you have picked a few you are interested in start having a look around jobs. What you want to do is find a course that has the most amount of available jobs at the end of it. So in other words there is no point in doing a web design course if there are no web design jobs available. If there are lots of jobs in networking then you should be looking at doing something like that. Now this is only an example, I am not saying there is loads of jobs in networking so go and do a course in it. You are going to have to study the available courses and available jobs and match them up.

If you don’t mind me asking how come you have been out of work so long?

mikemac

grundie wrote: »

My resignation letter was terse, but not rude. I explained my concerns about poor software and low salaries. I had a suspicion that the company would one day get sued and I didn't want to be there when it happened..

Why oh why did you put that on your resignation letter?
Of course you will piss off the owners, even if it's all true

Here is your next resignation letter:
"To HR & Management
I finish on x date and this is my x days notice
Regards
My name"

Would take 30 seconds to type and print. No more details is required at all!

Why did you highlight these issues? What do you care if you are leaving?
It blew a possible reference and none of your suggestions will be implemented.

board om

micmclo wrote: »

Why oh why did you put that on your resignation letter?
Of course you will piss off the owners, even if it's all true

Here is your next resignation letter:
"To HR & Management
I finish on x date and this is my x days notice
Regards
My name"

Would take 30 seconds to type and print. No more details is required at all!

Why did you highlight these issues? What do you care if you are leaving?
It blew a possible reference and none of your suggestions will be implemented.

spot on. as i said the letter is why you are in thsi situation now. in future just use the micmclo's letter. you dont need to highlight their errors. your leaving anyway so who cares.

Eoin

If the employer already knows someone in the old company, then you'd have to expect they'll make a casual enquiry. It's still not right, but what most people would do. Cold calling to get a reference is out of order though.

I agree with what the others are saying. Your resignation letter was not the way to go. You obviously had no intention of staying, so why bring up the problems you had? It's not as if they could have done anything to make you stay. If they had asked if you would do an exit interview, then perhaps bring it up then, but still in a constructive manner.

You didn't work your notice because your boss wasn't happy when you resigned. A large part of this unhappiness could have been because of the indignant letter, so you have to take some of the blame for that. You are possibly in breach of contract for that, but this isn't the place for legal issues.

It doesn't sound like a professional company at all, but I'm afraid it also sounds you sunk to their level. You have to take the higher road with these matters, and give them the mental two fingers when you're in a new job you like and they're still acting like cowboys.

Incidentally, when you sought legal advice, did you ask what your liability could have been if the company had been sued? It sounds like an irate customer venting at the first person they spoke to more than anything else. I'd say call centre staff in places like eircom and NTL get told they'll have the pants sued off them regularly.

In case nobody has asked this so far, is there anyone in the company who could give you a reference?

grundie

micmclo wrote: »

Why oh why did you put that on your resignation letter?
Of course you will piss off the owners, even if it's all true

Here is your next resignation letter:
"To HR & Management
I finish on x date and this is my x days notice
Regards
My name"

Would take 30 seconds to type and print. No more details is required at all!

Why did you highlight these issues? What do you care if you are leaving?
It blew a possible reference and none of your suggestions will be implemented.

I didn't mention that they might get sued. I just stated my opinion that some of their products were lacking. I only done this since a client was getting their solicitor ready and I wanted to no part in the mess that may follow. It was a bit of arse covering.

I know it wasn't the wisest thing to do, I knew that at the time. But it felt so good, especially when I was able to stand and smile when my ex-boss launched a f-bomb attack on me. He wasn't happy that I had resigned as they had taken on more projects, despite already being short staffed.

Knowing how previous employees who resigned were talked about, I did not expect to get a good reference even if I left with a nice resignation letter.

grundie

eoin_s wrote: »

Incidentally, when you sought legal advice, did you ask what your liability could have been if the company had been sued? It sounds like an irate customer venting at the first person they spoke to more than anything else. I'd say call centre staff in places like eircom and NTL get told they'll have the pants sued off them regularly.

The legal advice I sought was in relation to my own resignation and the funny phone calls and not to down to anything that happened on the job.

As for the work issue, it was very serious. Something scheduled to take two weeks to develop taking two years and numerous cost overruns. It was going to turn nasty and I wanted no part of it.

Occam

grundie wrote: »

The owners kept taking on new work, even though they were short at least five developers .....my workload kept increasing. ....some of the products they developed were of a lower quality than what the clients expected.

Welcome to the world of software development. This is par for the course.

grundie wrote: »

I refused to work my notice period.

Dumb Idea.

grundie wrote: »

I suspect some of the companies I have approached may have made informal inquiries to my former employer.

Its Dublin, of course they did. It would be pretty silly not to. I can link to most companies in Dublin, as can anyone relatively senior in the industry.

grundie wrote: »

II know this would probably be illegal under the Data Protection Act, unless I was asked for permission.....Despite its illegality, I just feel that some companies must do it.....I have seen a solicitor who has said if it is happening it would be illegal, but proving it is next to impossible.

Well this "solicitor" is wrong, as are you. In no way is it illegal to give a character reference as your behaviour in your previous employment can be regarded as in the public domain.

grundie wrote: »

Should I explicitly tell potential employers not to contact my previous employer?

You don't think that might give the game away?

Eoin

Occam wrote: »

Well this "solicitor" is wrong, as are you. In no way is it illegal to give a character reference as your behaviour in your previous employment can be regarded as in the public domain.

I'd be slow to give any definitive legal judgements based on what you've read here. I have to assume that his solicitor has more details than we have. I take it you're in IT, not law?

hunnymonster

could you redraft your CV so that it is sectioned under different sets of skills rather than chronologically. Then you could give a previous employer in Derry as your reference. Normally I wouldn't suggest this but in your first post you did say your last job was below your skills and experience level.

light123

Hi Board Om,

I only finished my degree last year and did a training course and have for the last few weeks run a course in the evening. I think doing a Fas course would just continue my time of being unemployed. I am getting interviews, its just a matter of some time soon getting lucky with the right interview and landing a job.
The reason why I have not worked for so long is that I came to Dublin after being away. I started doing my degree and limped through it. The job never really went well and I attempted a number of times to look for a job else where. In the end a new manager was brought in and came down on me on everything I was doing, nothing I was doing was right. It came to formal meetings about my performance, in the end I asked them to fire me as I was so cracked up and basically a nervous wreck from it all.
This is a very compressed and I have probably skipped some things but there's enough to give the picture. I sent my CV far and wide but to no avail.
I was on anti depressents before I left the job until a little after finishing the degree.

So there you go, for a while I was basket case. I survived and now wouldn't mind earning a few euros for a few hours work during the day doing some sort of IT work.

nesf

Occam wrote: »

Well this "solicitor" is wrong, as are you. In no way is it illegal to give a character reference as your behaviour in your previous employment can be regarded as in the public domain.

Well in this case, they just need to read part of the resignation letter and say the person refused to work the notice period. Which are both documented and "fact". The general (not legal) opinion on here is that a "bad reference" will usually consist of a list of documented misdeeds that the company has record of if they're playing it safe/professional. They don't need to give any more detail, that'd be enough to set off alarm bells in most potential employers within the same business unless the OP's previous company was really at the bottom of the rung and is known within the business for it.

If the company was in any way prominent or respected, you've painted yourself into an awkward corner OP to be blunt.

Occam

nesf wrote: »

Well in this case, they just need to read part of the resignation letter and say the person refused to work the notice period. Which are both documented and "fact".

True, but I'd guess the OP is correct in assuming an informal chat has revealed his little tantrum, given that the interviewer knew people from his last job well. Probably something along the lines of "Hey we just got a cv in here from one of your guys, did you know he was thinking of a move? A response of "I sure did, he resigned suddenly and worked no notice period, but good riddance" would leave the cv in my recycle bin anyway.

While its very rare for a company to give a formal "bad reference" , its often done informally. I'd view anything other than a glowing reference as a bad reference, so sometimes its how you phrase things.

If the company was in any way prominent or respected, you've painted yourself into an awkward corner OP to be blunt.

Agreed.

nesf

Occam wrote: »

While its very rare for a company to give a formal "bad reference" , its often done informally. I'd view anything other than a glowing reference as a bad reference, so sometimes its how you phrase things.

Silence speaks volumes in these things. There's no need for a company to formally say anything bad, just saying nothing good gets the message across.

BigglesMcGee

Only 2 weeks ago i got a call from a friend who was to interview a guy for an IT position.

Conversation went like this:

"You used to work in company X, didnt you."

"Yep."

"Did you know Y ? "

"Yep, Total Gob****e."

"OK, thanks for the heads up. Wont be interviewing him so."


And the funniest part is that next day i got a call from another friend about the same guy. Same conversation. Same result.

And i expect more calls about him as he looks for a job in IT in Dublin.

The guy was my boss for about 2 months 8 years ago. And yes, he was indeed a gob****e.
This is a small town, especially for IT jobs. People should never rub ANYONE up the wrong way or it will come back and bite them.