Build construction job references from people who watched you work and do not sit inside your current firm: an owner’s representative, an architect, a superintendent, a subcontractor’s principal, a former boss. Offer a current-employer reference only after a written offer, as its last condition. Brief every reference, and assume calls will be made off your list.
The person who could settle it in one phone call sits forty feet from your desk. He has watched you run three jobs, he signed your last review, and he would say exactly what a contractor wants to hear. He is also the one person you cannot ask, because asking tells him you are leaving. Every quiet search hits the same wall, and it shapes your job references more than anything on the resume does. The list has to be built around the space where your current boss should be.
Who carries weight as job references in construction?
People who saw you make decisions from a different side of the job. An owner’s representative, an architect, a superintendent who worked for you, a subcontractor’s principal and a former boss who has since moved firms each saw something the others could not.
Count positions, not people: 5 of them, one reference each. The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes a construction manager as someone who works with architects, engineers, clients and trade specialists, and that sentence is close to a list of who has an opinion of you.
| Reference | What they saw | Why a contractor believes them |
|---|---|---|
| Owner’s representative | How you handled bad news and change orders | They were on the other side of the money |
| Architect | Whether your RFIs solved problems or built a claim | They work beside your competitors too |
| Superintendent who worked for you | Whether you backed the field or managed from the trailer | They have no reason to flatter a former boss |
| Subcontractor’s principal | Whether you paid, scoped and scheduled fairly | Their margin depended on you |
| Former boss, now elsewhere | Your whole record, including the bad job | They can speak without your firm hearing |
The last row is the one to work on. A former boss who left your current firm two years ago knows nearly everything the man forty feet away knows, and can say it without anyone in your building finding out.
One caution: an owner’s representative or architect on a job you are running today is a current-employer reference in disguise. They talk to your boss every week.
When should a current-employer reference be given?
At offer stage, and no earlier. The usual sequence is a written offer conditional on one satisfactory reference from your present firm, taken after you have resigned or with your explicit consent. A contractor that wants that call sooner is asking you to carry all of the risk.
Stage it in three steps. First, say in the opening interview that your employer does not know and that nobody there may be contacted. Second, supply the off-site list early, so the contractor has evidence before it needs faith. Third, when an offer is ready, ask for the current-employer check to be written into the letter as the final condition, with the wording agreed.
Formal checks have their own rule. If the contractor uses an outside company to run a background report, federal law generally requires your written permission first, which the Federal Trade Commission sets out in its guidance on consumer reports and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission covers in its page on background checks. State law adds to that and varies. Read the authorization form before you sign it, and note what it allows.
An authorization form covers reports. It does not cover a phone call between two people who have known each other for years.
How should you brief your job references?
Call each one before any name is passed on. Tell them the role, the firm if you are free to, which projects are likely to come up, and the two or three things the job needs. Then ask whether they are comfortable. A hesitant yes is a no.
A briefing is not a script. A reference who recites your talking points sounds coached, and an experienced caller hears it by the second answer. What you are doing is saving them from being caught cold on a job from six years ago. Give each one:
- The projects you expect them to be asked about, with dates and your title then.
- The job that went badly, and how you describe it, so their account and yours agree on the facts.
- The seat you are being considered for, since “would she make a good project executive” is a different question from “was she a good project manager.”
- A request to tell you afterwards what was asked.
A good search firm will not ask whether you were liked. It asks which decisions were yours alone, what you did when the job turned, and who else the caller should speak to. Our piece on reference checks lays out that call from the contractor’s side, and it is worth reading as the person being checked.
That last question, who else the caller should speak to, is where your list stops being the whole list.
What are backdoor references, and how do you get ahead of them?
Calls made to people you did not name, usually someone the hiring executive already knows who worked near you. They happen because every construction market is a small town. You cannot prevent them, so tell the difficult story yourself before someone else does.
The president of a Houston general contractor does not need your list to find someone who knows you. A mechanical subcontractor that works for both firms will do, and so will an architect in Atlanta who sits across the table from six general contractors a year. The call takes four minutes and is never mentioned to you.
Two things follow. The first is a risk to your confidentiality: an off-list call to someone close to your current firm is how a quiet search stops being quiet, which our guide to a confidential search treats at length. Ask the contractor and any recruiter, directly, to make no off-list calls without telling you first. A reputable firm agrees at once. If you are using a recruiter, the questions in our note on recruiter relationships apply here too. The other place a quiet search shows is online, and our note on a LinkedIn profile covers how to be found without telling your employer.
The second is that the off-list call finds the job you left off. Somebody remembers the parking structure that finished five months late. If the contractor hears about it from a subcontractor before hearing it from you, the lateness matters less than the omission.
A reference list in the order to build it
- Write down the five positions and put the strongest name you can against each.
- Mark anyone who talks to your current employer weekly, and move them to offer stage.
- Find the former boss who has left, and call that person first.
- Brief each reference by phone, never by text.
- Tell the hiring side about the bad job and the likely critic before references are requested.
Bring that list, including the name you cannot use yet, to a first conversation. Selah Talent Partners works on confidential executive search for mandates that cannot be publicly posted, across the United States. A firm worth your time calls no reference without your say-so and charges candidates nothing. Start at the candidates page.
Forty feet away, your best reference is still at his desk. A good list makes him the sixth person to say it.
Sources and further reading
- Construction manager, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook
- Consumer reports, Federal Trade Commission, guidance for employers
- Background checks, US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission