Epidiascope

I was recently asked to be a reference for a co-worker who is interviewing for a job. The company he was interviewing with used skillsurvey.com for the prescreening process.

As the reference, this was not a good experience. The first obnoxious thing they do is send an email as if they are the candidate. They didn’t tell the candidate they were doing so, but they used his name in the from field, and signed his name at the bottom. Nowhere in the missive does it mention that the email is automatically generated by a third party. The email itself even included the ancient and outdated “if you’re using AOL, copy and paste this link…” line. If you don’t respond within precisely 23 hours of the first email, the system sends an automated followup (pretending to be a reply from the job candidate) bugging you to fill it out.

Clicking through the link takes you to a set of basic information about your relationship with the candidate with one key field you must fill out: your area of expertise. More on this in a moment. Once you get to the actual survey, it turns out to be a set of 23 pretty generic “does this person do the job and play well with others” type questions. Then it asks you to specifically name the reference’s weaknesses (a fair question, certainly), but tries to sugar coat it by saying “We all realize that no one’s perfect; in fact, we find that the majority of references provide helpful information in this section.” Huh? So since the information is going to be helpful, you’re hoping to get more negative feedback than I would otherwise give?

Then we get to the really obnoxious part: The tiny non-obvious opt-out checkbox. If you don’t opt-out, you (as the non-job-seeking reference) get added to their “Passive Candidate Compiler™”, which does pretty much what you expect: build a database of people who haven’t otherwise indicated an interest in new positions who can be spammed at the drop of a hat. Furthermore, since you have been given ZERO information about what company is hiring your co-worker, you don’t know whether you want to allow them to keep your contact info.

I’m sure skillsurvey.com is cheaper than hiring a real person to call these references. I don’t know if it actually provides better information. But from the receiving end, it’s not a good experience. Don’t be lazy. Call the references directly. If you must use an automated pre-screening system like this, at least use one that doesn’t play these silly games. Using this service negatively impacts your image.