What is up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and CEO of Morning Brew.

Before we start today's episode, I have one give and one take. My give, I want to give a huge shout out to John Jay an avid Founders Journal listener.

John wrote into me about episode 137 about how to make reference checks less shitty.

You should definitely go back to the episode which aired on December 16th of 2020

if you're interested in the topic of reference checks,

but the crux of the show was basically my belief that reference

checks are broken. No candidate is ever going to provide a reference that will ever say not great things about them,

which generally means that no matter what you hear in a check,

it won't change your decision as a hiring manager.

I hypothesize that there must be a better way,

and John wrote in sharing his experience with references.

His strategy is to get in contact with previous coworkers, managers, and direct reports of a

candidate that are not listed on a reference list and get their specific thoughts on the

candidate.

Obviously this is a little unorthodox and John's belief is that you will get way more substantive information out of non-listed references and he also believes it's fully in the right of the

employer and the hiring manager to do their due diligence just as a candidate will try to

talk to as many contexts as possible ahead of joining a company.

While it's not something I personally have done before, I do think John presents a really interesting idea as well as the risks to be aware of.

Thanks again John for writing in.

So that was my give, now my take.

Founders journal listeners, I am asking you to take two minutes to leave a review for the show. I have been

studying all of the different methods to grow a podcast and nothing is as

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