So what can you say?!

Have you ever been asked to give a reference for a staff member and just not felt quite comfortable doing so? You don’t want to say anything disparaging but you cannot in all honesty sing their praises so what do you do?

A blank silence can suggest a whole lot of BAD, whereas you may not mean that. By waxing lyrical on how lovely they were and valued and blah blah blah… when you don’t mean it can be very detrimental to another business owner and you probably don’t want to do that either.

So here’s a solution!

You can say something along the lines of “Joe Blogs worked for us from DATE to DATE. I am happy to provide you with a certificate of service if you’d like”.

Solved! You haven’t said anything bad or tremendously good. You have provided the facts of employment (and to help you out here is a certificate of service document that you can use free of charge!).

And of course if you are about to hire someone and are just not 100% sure you’ve got the right person – call me and I can help provide an objective viewpoint that might just save you having to ever provide just a Certificate of Service!