Edited excerpt from 3 Essential Steps to Doing a Thorough Reference Check by Jeff Markowitz:
It’s hard to predict anyone’s failure or success in a given role, but I’ve found that references tend to be overly kind during a reference call. Roughly speaking, if you downplay positive feedback by 30% and amplify negative feedback by the same amount, it should give you a pretty good picture of the candidate.
Pingback: How to interpret negative feedback from a job candidate’s references | A Founder's Notebook