Letters of Recommendation

Confirming Details on a Résumé

It is not uncommon for applicants to engage in résumé fraud—that is, lying on their résumé about what experience or education they actually have. Employers find that about 25% of résumés contain false or misleading information. Thus, one reason to check references or ask for letters of recommendation is simply to confirm the truthfulness of the information provided by the applicant.

Predicting Future Performance

Organizations can use references and letters of recommendation to predict future performance. However, references and letters of recommendation are generally not good predictors of future employee success, as the average validity for references is only .18. Using structured approaches to creating references and scoring letters of recommendation may increase their validity. References from people who know the applicant well are better predictors of future performance than references from people who are not well acquainted with the applicant.

Leniency

One reason that references and letters of recommendation are not good predictors of performance is that few references are negative. In fact, studies indicate that only 4% to 7% of references are average or negative. This leniency is not surprising, considering that most applicants select people who will be their reference providers.

Reference providers may also be lenient because they fear they will be the target of a defamation suit if they say negative things. A person providing references can be charged with defamation of character (slander if the reference was oral, libel if it was written) if the content of the reference is both untrue and made with malicious intent. This fear keeps many organizations from providing references at all. Those who do provide references often ask former employees to sign waivers giving their employer the right to provide information and future employers the right to ask for information.

Reliability

A second reason that letters and references are not good predictors of future performance is that two people providing references or writing letters for the same person seldom agree with one another. A metaanalysis of five studies found that the average reliability for references is only .22. In fact, research indicates there is more agreement between recommendations written by the same person for two different applicants than between two people writing recommendations for [Page 456]the same person. Thus, letters of recommendation may say more about the person writing the letter than about the person for whom it is being written.

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