What's up everyone this is Alex Lieberman co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew welcome back to founders journal my personal audio diary where I give you the business builder the tools

You need to think better in order to build better whether that's building a business a team or a new product

It is time for our second ever mini series of founders journal. Here's how it works

This week we are focused on one crucial topic in business that is important to builders founders and all professionals

And we'll be serving you double the content to make the topic stick the topic of this mini series is building your team

And today's episode is all about how to make reference checks. Yes reference checks actually useful. Let's hop into it

So in life and in the world of business, there are a lot of things that we do just because they've always been done in a certain way

We don't question it. We just do it on autopilot and it just seems like the type of thing that you should do because it's always been done

It's exactly why Morning Brew was originally created because people felt like they just should read the Wall Street Journal

They've been told to read the Wall Street Journal

There isn't an alternative and so they don't question it. They just do it and in business

Nothing feels more applicable to this category of just doing things for the sake of doing things then reference checks

I promise you this is worth your time reference checks seem unsexy, but they are so incredibly important in business

Basically what happens is you have someone late in an interview process for a role

They're one of your top two candidates and you want to talk to past co-workers or bosses or direct reports of theirs to feel settled in the decision you're making

But the issue that I have found is that these conversations are historically useless and

They're flawed from the get go. This is typically how things go down

A candidate makes it to reference checks meaning they're one of your last three candidates left in an interview process

You ask this candidate for references the candidate gives you three to four references and then you set up 20 to 30 minute calls with those three to four references

and

A hundred percent of the time you end up speaking to a self-selected group of people that the potential employee knows will speak

super positively about the relationship with them and so how it goes is you usually get on to the call with a reference check

...