can I refuse a reference check that’s taking too long?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
A reader writes:
I’m in a role where I regularly manage students, so I get asked to give references frequently. A former intern reached out to me this week asking me to be a reference, and I got a call from HR at their prospective employer (for a very entry-level role).
The reference questions were standard, but kind of weird part #1: the HR person was very, very slow while taking notes. I know it’s not easy to take interview notes while listening, but slow to the point that after each of my answers there would be 2+ minutes of silence while I listened to her type. Then she would read my response back to me verbatim. It was … tedious.
Weird part #2: the reference checker asked to put me on hold and didn’t return for more than 5 minutes. I told myself maybe she had a bathroom crisis, but when she got back on, she apologized and then said she had another meeting and asked to call me back later. This annoyed me because it felt like … if you didn’t leave enough time for this reference check and can’t be late to your meeting, maybe you just have to work with the reference questions you did get through? But fine, whatever, I gave a time later she could call me back.
Weird parts #3-4: She missed the time I gave and instead called me the next day (apologizing and saying how busy she is). We finished the reference (just as slow and tedious as before), but not before she put me on hold again (!), while leaving our call unmuted and taking another call (!?). I wanted to say something but I didn’t want to jeopardize my former intern’s employment prospects and figured whatever, this’ll be the end of it.
Surprise: it was not the end of it. Weird part #5: I missed 2 calls from her the next day and then got an email that says unfortunately “we” missed one question and could I please send an answer over by the end of the day.
My questions:
1) Can I just say no to the email? Am I wrong to want to say no?
2) If I do decline to continue, do I tell the applicant I couldn’t finish the reference and will they (rightfully) think I’m a jerk?
3) Could I have steered this differently earlier in the process, like saying no when they asked to call me back the first time, or missed the time I gave? What is an acceptable amount of time and energy to be expected to give for reference?
I’m usually thrilled to give a reference and appreciate the value of them for job seekers, but I feel really weird about this and don’t know if I’m being too much of a pushover, or being too impatient with this person trying to do their job.
You’re not being too impatient!
People who are wiling to be references are doing reference-checkers a favor by agreeing to share their time and their candid thoughts. Reference-checkers have an obligation to be considerate of their time.
Putting you on hold for five minutes was rude, to say nothing of doing it again the next day. Things come up unexpectedly, of course, but she should have come right back to you, apologized, and asked to call you back if it was a true emergency — not left you sitting there for five minutes. And doing it again the next day suggests these weren’t emergencies; she was just being cavalier about your time.
And a reference call shouldn’t require two separate conversations … let alone an email asking for more on top of that. Typically reference calls are about 10-15 minutes, sometimes up to 20. It’s rare for them to take up more time than that.
You can indeed set limits on how much you’re available for when someone is being this presumptuous. If you realize at some point during a reference call that it’s going to take more time than you can reasonably invest (as it sounds like you did at some point during the tedious typing/repeat-back process), it’s fine to say, “I should let you know I only have a few more minutes” or “I should warn you I have a hard stop at 2:30” or so forth.
The tricky part, of course, is that you don’t want to harm someone’s chances of a job offer. And you should be as generous with your time as you reasonably can be for candidates you’re enthusiastic about and when the reference-checker appears to be trying to respect your schedule. But when you do need to set limits, the key is to make it clear how enthusiastic you about about the person (assuming in fact you are). For example: “My schedule this week is packed and I can’t do a third call, but I can tell you that Jane is fantastic — smart, creative, detail-oriented, and a pleasure to work with. I would be thrilled to hire her back and my schedule restrictions don’t reflect on her at all.”
That’s what I’d recommend doing here: Respond to the email request for yet more of your time with something like, “Since we’ve already done two phone calls, I won’t have time this week to answer additional questions, but I will sum up my earlier feedback by saying Jane is excellent. (Include one sentence of details here.) I hope this helps!” (Of course, if you could just answer their question in the same amount of time this would take, you might as well do that instead.)
I don’t think that’s something you need to report to the candidate, but it would also be fine to tell them, “They ended up splitting the reference call into multiple calls and then sent an email with an additional question after we’d already talked for quite a long time. My sense was that this is about the reference-checker’s slowness at her job, not about concerns with you. After spending 45 minutes with them on two separate calls, I wasn’t able to answer their final emailed question, but I gave you a glowing reference and emphasized that you are (insert strongest qualities here) .”
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