Why Your Reference Check Process Is Not Telling You What You Need to Know
Reference checks are one of the most consistently misused tools in executive hiring. Most organizations conduct them because they are expected, not because they are designed to surface information that actually changes a hiring decision. The standard process, three references selected by the candidate, a list of generic questions about work ethic and communication style, a 20-minute phone call that ends with the reference saying something positive, produces a document that confirms the hire but rarely challenges it. For a VP of Facilities, a Director of Construction, or a Project Executive who will be leading a multi-year capital program or managing a team of fifteen, that is not enough.
This post covers what an effective reference check process for senior construction and facilities leadership looks like, why most processes produce noise rather than signal, and what specific changes produce better information.
Why Standard Reference Checks Fail
Candidates Control the Reference List
The most fundamental problem with standard reference check processes is that the candidate selects the references. No candidate is going to offer a reference who will say something damaging. The references they provide are people they know will speak positively about them, people they have stayed in close contact with, and people who are aware they have been listed as a reference and have mentally prepared to give a strong endorsement. These are not useless conversations, but they are conversations with known outcome distributions, and organizations that treat them as objective verification are misunderstanding what they are actually receiving.
The references that would produce the most informative conversations, the manager who had a difficult relationship with the candidate, the peer who observed how the candidate managed a crisis, the client who experienced the project from the owner’s side when something went wrong, are almost never on a candidate-provided reference list. Accessing those perspectives requires either back-channel reference development through the search firm’s network or a direct conversation with the candidate about why you want to speak with a specific person they have not listed. Both are more productive than accepting the provided list without question.
Generic Questions Produce Generic Answers
The second structural problem is question design. Questions like “How would you describe this person’s leadership style?” and “What are their greatest strengths?” produce answers that are predictable, polished, and largely interchangeable across candidates. References who have taken calls like this before, and most experienced executives have, know what a helpful answer sounds like and provide one without being asked to. The result is a set of reference notes that describes every strong candidate as a collaborative communicator with strong technical skills and high integrity.
Effective reference check questions are specific, situational, and calibrated to the role. They ask about the specific types of programs the candidate will be leading, the specific stakeholder environment they will be operating in, and the specific challenges the organization expects them to face. A question like “Can you describe a time when this person had to deliver bad news to a major institutional client and how they handled it?” surfaces information that a generic leadership style question never will. Designing these questions requires knowing what matters for the specific role, which means doing the reference check after you have a clear picture of the candidate’s profile and the role’s requirements, not as a checkbox at the end of the process.
The Wrong People Are Making the Calls
In many organizations, reference checks for senior construction and facilities leadership roles are conducted by HR generalists or internal talent acquisition staff who do not have the technical background to probe the candidate’s actual construction or facilities management experience. A reference who mentions that the candidate struggled to manage complex subcontractor relationships on a healthcare construction project is providing significant information, but only to an interviewer who understands what that means operationally. An HR generalist may note it as a minor concern and move on; a construction executive conducting the same conversation would know to ask three follow-up questions.
For VP and Director-level searches in construction and facilities, the reference check conversations should involve the hiring authority or a technically qualified peer, not just the talent acquisition function. The hiring manager does not need to lead every call, but they should be involved in designing the questions, reviewing the notes, and following up on anything that requires technical context to evaluate properly.
What Effective Reference Checks Actually Look Like
Develop Back-Channel References Alongside Candidate-Provided Ones
Back-channel references are conversations with people who know the candidate professionally but are not on the candidate’s provided list. For senior construction and facilities executives, these conversations are often accessible through the search firm’s network, through the hiring organization’s own professional connections, or through industry contacts who have worked with the candidate at a previous organization. A back-channel reference conversation is not a secret investigation; it is a professional conversation in a field where most senior people know each other and where candid input about professional performance is a normal part of how hiring decisions are made at this level.
Back-channel references should be pursued with the candidate’s awareness, not covertly. A direct conversation with the candidate, explaining that in addition to their provided references you may speak with others in your network who have worked with them, is transparent and professional. Most candidates who are genuinely strong welcome this, because they know what back-channel conversations will reveal. Those who resist it are also telling you something.
Ask About Failure, Not Just Success
The most diagnostic reference check questions are the ones that ask about things that did not go well. “Tell me about a project where this person faced a significant setback and how they responded” is a more revealing question than any variant of “What are their greatest strengths?” References who are genuinely supportive of the candidate will still answer this question honestly, and their answer will tell you whether the candidate is the kind of leader who learns from failure and takes accountability or the kind who deflects and blames circumstances. That distinction matters enormously for a VP of Facilities managing a $300 million capital program or a Director of Construction overseeing a complex renovation on an occupied academic campus.
Ask the Reference to Compare the Candidate to Others
Comparative questions break the positive framing that reference conversations default to. Asking a reference “In your experience with construction executives at this level, where would you rank this person’s ability to manage owner relationships?” or “Compared to other Directors of Facilities you have worked with, how would you assess their technical depth in MEP systems?” forces the reference out of a pure endorsement mode and into an evaluative one. The answers are more informative, and even moderately hedged answers to comparative questions are more diagnostic than enthusiastic answers to open-ended ones.
The Role of Your Search Partner in Reference Development
A search partner who conducts reference checks as a substantive part of the engagement rather than as a compliance step provides meaningfully different information than a candidate-managed process. They have independent relationships with people in the candidate’s professional network, they have conducted enough reference calls in the sector to know when an answer is hedged and when to probe, and they are not subject to the social dynamics that sometimes cause internal staff to underweight negative information they have received from a reference who was overall positive.
If your current search process treats reference checks as a formality that happens after the hiring decision has effectively been made, you are using a tool that costs time and produces little. Used well, reference development is one of the few points in a search process where you can access information about a candidate that neither their resume nor their interview can provide.
Real8 Group treats reference development as a substantive part of every search engagement. To discuss how we approach this and other elements of the search process, visit real8group.com/how-we-work, learn about our process at real8group.com/finding-talent, or reach out at real8group.com/contact.
Real8 Group is a specialized executive search firm serving the real estate, construction, engineering, and facilities operations sectors across the U.S.