my company won’t let anyone but HR give references

A reader writes:

I am applying to a position in my field with another organization, but one of the people who agreed to be a reference has told me they can no longer be one due to the following in our employee guidebook: “Outside Requests for References: Inquiries and written requests for references or employment verification regarding a current or former employee must be referred to Human Resources. No employee may issue a reference letter without permission from Human Resources. Under no circumstances should any information be released over the phone.”

Does this really mean I can’t ask any of my coworkers to serve as references? If so, what should I do? I’ve worked my entire career in this field for this single organization, and I’ve no social life to speak of, so I don’t exactly have a lot of other options.

This is a terrible policy; most reference-checkers (or at least good reference-checkers) want to talk to managers and others who have worked directly with the candidate, not HR … and this means they’re probably only going to get very basic info like dates of employment and whether you’re in good standing.

Interestingly, and annoyingly, plenty of companies with policies like this still want to conduct detailed reference checks themselves when they’re hiring, so it doesn’t go both ways.

If you hadn’t worked there your whole career, I’d tell you to use references from previous jobs (a good idea most of the time anyway, so you don’t risk your current employer finding out). But in your case: sometimes colleagues are willing to break this kind of rule by framing it as, “I’m not officially speaking for the company because all our references need to go through HR, but I can give you my personal recommendation as an individual.”

Otherwise, though, do you have former coworkers who no longer work there who you could use as references? They won’t be bound by the company’s policy once they’re not employees anymore. Or clients or other professional contacts who don’t work for your organization?

Barring that, when you get to the reference-checking stage, you can explain that your company won’t let anyone other than HR give references so they know what to expect when they call.

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