Job reference lists: How To Write A Reference List

How To Write A Reference List

One of the best ways to sell yourself to a hiring manager is to let others sing your praises. That’s why it’s important to know how to write a reference list as you begin your job search in earnest.

Certainly, being able to promote your own professional skills and career wins during an interview is a must. But potential employers will want to hear from other people who can back up your claims.

What Is a Reference List?

A reference list is a list of people that an employer can contact to learn more about your past work and get a closer look at what you’d bring to the table.

References should be credible professionals who are eager to recommend you. Usually, they’re composed of a combination of current or former bosses, co-workers, direct reports, professional mentors, and academic advisors (if you’re a recent college graduate).

How Many References Do I Include?

Some employers request a specific number of references. If they don’t, your best approach is to drill down your list to three to four people. Although some hiring managers will only call one or two references, it’s best to provide several names in case one of your references is unavailable.

How Do I Prep My References?

As you think about how to write a reference list and whom to include on it, be sure to ask the person(s) for permission before submitting their contact info to a potential employer. After all, the last thing you want is for an employer to call one of your references, only to have the person say something negative about you that costs you a job offer.

When asking a former boss to be a reference, see if the person is allowed to talk about your job performance—some companies only let managers confirm a past employee’s job title and dates of employment.

To help your references prepare their remarks, provide them with a copy of your most recent resume, a brief description of the job that you’re applying for, and, if possible, the name of the employee who may contact them.

Reminding references about the specific projects you worked on and results you delivered is key. Consider steering references toward certain topics and make helpful suggestions.

For instance, if you’re applying for a job as a paralegal, you might ask your past manager to talk about your attention to detail; or if you’re applying for a job as a fashion designer, you might ask a former co-worker to talk about your creativity and artistic eye.

How Do I Format My Reference List?

You want to give prospective employers several ways to contact your references, while also providing information about how you know the person.

In terms of formatting, consider using this reference template:

Reference’s name
Reference’s job title
Reference’s company
Reference’s phone number
Reference’s email address

A brief description of your relationship (i.e., supervisor)

Make sure you have each reference’s current contact information. (If someone recently changed jobs, find out the person’s new work email address.)

How Do I Prevent Reference Burnout?

The longer your job search goes on, the more likely you are to have one or more of your references contacted by employers too frequently. To avoid becoming a nuisance, consider alternating the endorsers you use periodically.

In addition, take time to properly thank your references. Remember: These people are sticking their necks out for you—and what they say on your behalf could win or lose you a job. A short thank-you email is a small gesture, but it can go a long way.

And, if you land a job, make sure your reference(s) know it, and offer to return the favor one day.

Nab a Job Offer

Learning how to write a reference list is just one step you can take to present yourself as all-star in your industry. Need a little help closing the deal? Create a profile on Monster—it’s free and simple to get started. We can connect you to helpful recruiters and send you job search advice to help you through every phase of the job search process.

How Your Job Reference Page Should Look

How should a job references page look? Learn how to create a list of job references or download a job references template designed by the experts at iHire.

Download Template

Download “Reference Sheet – Standard Format.docx”Download “Reference Sheet – Categorized Format.docx”

Once you have permission from your references to send their information to employers, it’s time to construct the official sheet for the hiring manager. But how should a job references page look? Follow the tips below and choose the job references template you like best to create a clean and professional reference page.

1: Use Consistent Formatting

Your resume, cover letter, and job references format should look like they belong together. The header with your contact information should be formatted identically on all your application materials. Similarly, type the job reference list in the same font as the body text in the other two documents.

2: Order Your Job Reference List Meaningfully

If you are at the beginning of your career, you might have certain references that are significantly more relevant than others. Because some employers may not contact every person on your job reference list, you should push your best references to the top of the page. While there is no guarantee that hiring managers will call your top contacts first, it’s a good way to boost your chances.

For job seekers who have been in the workforce for several years, however, all your job references may be equally strong. In this case you should create a list of job references that is organized either in alphabetized order by last name or chronologically from the time you last worked with them.

Learn How iHire’s Resume Builder Tool Can Help You Stand Out

3: Eliminate Distractions

How should a job references page look? The answer is rather simple. The best job references format is clean and straightforward; there’s no need to include details like your work history here. Your professional reference page needs to give prospective employers a quick and easy way to identify and contact the people who can speak to your experience, work ethic, and abilities.

Take care not to clutter the page with extra details that will confuse or frustrate the reader. When listing contact information, include only the best ways for hiring managers to contact each reference—that means one phone number and one email address per person.

Additionally, unless the potential employer specifically requests otherwise, keep your job reference list to 3–5 individuals. Any more than that is overwhelming and unnecessary. Plus, including fewer contacts gives you more control over who the hiring manager speaks with.

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Job References Template #1: The Standard Format

The job references format you choose should depend on what the potential employer asks for. Unless the hiring manager explicitly asks for both personal and professional references, your best bet is to provide professional references only.

As you can see on from the template, this type of job references page will look like one list of professional references without sections or headers.

After a header with your own information, type each contact’s information using the following job reference format:

[Prefix] [First Name] [Last Name] [Suffix, if exists]

[Position Title], [Company Name]

Formerly: [Position Title], [Company Name]—(Optional.  Use if position has changed since you worked together.)

[Email Address]

[Phone Number]

Download a full standard job references template at the top of this article.

Job References Template #2: The Categorized Format

When employers ask for both personal and professional references, use this format to categorize your job references. Distinguishing which contact falls within each group helps employers decide which references to contact and what questions to prepare ahead of time.

This job reference format utilizes subheadings to visually separate the page into two job reference lists. Use the same font size and typeface for these labels as you did for the section headers on your resume. Furthermore, the final line for each person on the list should describe how the contact knows you (“Relationship to Candidate”), as a personal reference’s ability to speak to your character largely depends on their relationship to you.

Download a full categorized job references template at the top of this article.

After submitting your job reference list to the employer, make sure to update your job reference tracker. You should also get in contact with your references to let them know they might be receiving a call sometime soon and say thank you. After all, their help could be the key to landing your dream job!

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How to make recommendations for job search

Recommendations are needed – if you build a career purposefully, understanding what tasks and what salary you want to achieve. (The opposite of a purposeful job search is the occasional search for “any” job; changing professions and specializations under the pressure of external circumstances; lack of ideas about the dream job).

The purpose of the references is to confirm your qualifications; give the employer the opportunity to look at you through the eyes of other people (your colleagues, former managers, partners, clients, students, etc. ). It’s one thing – what the employer sees in the resume, and what you tell at the interview. Another is what people who saw you in action think about you, who had the opportunity to evaluate your skills, abilities and personal qualities.

A list of references (people who are ready to confirm your qualifications) is needed for every applicant. How to compile this list, where to get recommenders from, what to do with this list – we will talk about this in the article.

How to make a list of referees?

You need to remember all the people with whom you have worked more or less closely (better – more). These are your colleagues, mentors and students, former managers, clients. These are the people you have collaborated with on a full-time, outsourced, and freelance basis. These are people with whom you have worked for a long time, and with whom you have communicated in separate projects.

Who should be remembered and included in the list of recommenders in the first place?

People with whom you had a POSITIVE experience of cooperation. You should not consider as a recommender a person who will give you a negative assessment rather than a positive one.

People who will easily remember you if the employer calls you, says your name and offers to share their impressions of cooperation with you. Perhaps you should not include people with whom you worked 10 years ago in the list of recommenders. It will look strange if the recommender answers the recruiter’s question: “How, how, you say, this person’s name? Do not remember that”.

People who actually have something to say about you. Imagine that a recruiter calls, asks, and the recommender responds with general phrases (he has nothing against you, and would be happy to give a more detailed positive review, but he has nothing to say – you touched just a little). Such a recommendation will not make your image in the eyes of the employer more convincing.

So you sat down, armed yourself with a cup of coffee or tea, and made a list of people you could ask for recommendations. What’s next?

Sort the recommenders into baskets

This stage is relevant for people who have changed professions/specializations. Suppose the applicant worked as a secretary, translator, governess and teacher. In each of these professions, the applicant has come across people who can act as referees. But some referees will tell you that the applicant was a good secretary; others will describe him as an excellent teacher; others will talk about his qualifications as an interpreter. Question: why does an employer need to know all this?

Which references are needed depends on the vacancy. If our applicant is applying for the position of secretary, it is necessary to attract recommenders who worked with him in the framework of the secretarial position. If an applicant is looking for a job in a translation agency, he should be recommended by the people for whom he acted as a translator, etc.

That is why referees should be divided into groups: by profession and specialization. Depending on the vacancy, you will work with the appropriate group of referees: whose reviews are directly related to the position.

Get referrer consent

Referrers should be aware that they may be called by your potential employers. Firstly, it is ethical: before you give the contacts of the recommender to the employer, you must obtain his permission for this, since the phone and e-mail are personal information.

Secondly, it is better when the recommender is ready to give you a reference; or, in any case, he knows that, theoretically, a stranger can call him and ask about the experience of working with you. Otherwise, the recommender and the employer may have an unproductive dialogue, when the recommender remembers for 10 minutes who they are talking about, and then does not know what to say. Such one hundred percent impromptu recommendations are rarely successful and do not bring benefits to the applicant.

So contact each referrer (by phone or email), ask for permission to include the person on the referral list, and let them know that you are currently actively looking for a job and your potential employer may call this person.

Be tactful

Be as tactful as possible when requesting a referral: “I would be very grateful if you would agree to act as a referee in my job search. Your feedback about my qualifications and experience can play a decisive role in my employment. I hope you can spare a few minutes of your time to communicate with my potential employer. If yes, can I give your e-mail and/or phone number to the employer? I promise that I will give your contacts to the employer only if it is your recommendation that is needed – as an expert in a certain professional field. Thank you in advance for your assistance.”

Think about how you can make it easier for the referrer

Let’s say your referee is willing to give feedback about you and your work. But he doesn’t know what to say.

Save him time by providing the information he needs.

Send him a description of the vacancy – so that the recommender understands what kind of work he is talking about. You can explain why you think you are a good fit for this position (this is a good way to remind the referee of your strengths).

Don’t be too pushy: don’t try to give the recommender ready-made instructions. He must understand that his unique opinion is valuable, that he can say whatever he sees fit.

Yes, the job seeker runs the risk that the employer will hear not only positive feedback, but also negative ones (we cannot be 100% sure of another person’s opinion). But a sincere review will be “live” – and for the employer this is the most valuable thing. No one believes “polished” reviews in which the applicant looks perfect.

Thank the referrer

If the employer mentions at the interview that he contacted your referees (and will tell you who exactly), thank these people. Just like that, without any purpose, sincerely – because someone took the time to assist in resolving your issues.

Update the list of referees

Review the list of referees from time to time, supplement it, update contact information.

Ideally, you need to keep in touch with the recommenders and communicate. Then the next time the employer calls the referee, he will not have difficulty remembering your name and your achievements.

This work – communication with referees – falls out of sight, seems unnecessary. Until you start looking for a job again. In order not to make a list of recommenders in force majeure mode, not to look for contacts, not to ask their consent in a hurry, maintain relationships even at such moments when everything is fine with you. The effort will pay off.

Place the list of recommendations suitable for this particular vacancy in your resume – in the very last block. You can mention several references in your cover letter.

How the list of recommendations works on Steam – Gamedev on DTF

The main thing from the analysis of indie developer Eric Johnson and the revelations of product designer Valve.

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Indie developer Eric Johnson, creator of the game Life Goes On: Done to Death, decided to look into the work of the Discovery Queue, a collection of several potentially interesting games that appear daily on the Steam home page.

As part of the study, he analyzed 672 games that the service recommended to him within two months, and tried to find out the details of the algorithms from Alden Kroll, one of the key developers of the Valve online store. We chose the main thing from the developer’s analysis.

At the beginning of the material, Johnson warns that he only monitored his personal account, and cannot guarantee that the algorithm will work in a similar way for other users – although it would be logical to assume. In addition, the developer does not have information about exactly what changes Valve made to the algorithm during the observation period, and how they affected the results.

Prior to the experiment, Johnson periodically used a list of recommendations: by the time the observations began, he had watched 1323 games and noted 339of them as uninteresting.

Valve does not disclose the mechanisms of the recommendation system – if too much is known, the algorithm may be tried to cheat. The most “public” element of the system is the inscription “this product is in your recommendations because …”, which appears after you click on the next suggested game. However, from a conversation with Alden Kroll, Valve’s product designer, the developer learned that the explanation provided in this inscription should not be considered the real reason that the game was among the recommended ones.

According to Kroll, “this product is on your recommendation list because it has a lot of positive reviews” does not mean that it is being shown to you for that reason. It’s more of a “guess about why a user might like this particular game”.

Kroll explains that the mechanism does not work in the most obvious way, and sometimes why he recommends a particular game to the user is very difficult to explain in words. Nevertheless, Valve believes that the player must certainly be provided with simple and understandable explanations – for this purpose, “stubs” like “leader of sales” appeared on the list.

We choose the reasons that seem to be weighty, and at the same time understandable to the user. For example: if the game has good reviews, then it is easy to use as an explanation, and we will most likely choose this reason in order to show the user.

Steam Administration

During the experiment, Johnson’s most common explanation was “because the game is popular” at 42% of the time. How exactly Steam calculates “popularity” is unknown – probably due to the number of fresh reviews. It seemed strange to Johnson that a mechanism designed to find games for the user that would be difficult to find by conventional means so often recommends what is already popular.

The second most popular “reason” is the large number of positive reviews. This explanation was met by the developer in 38% of cases. Only games with 80 percent or more positive reviews receive such an inscription, but, according to Kroll, there is no point in chasing this figure.

According to a Valve employee, only a “negative” rating can affect the likelihood of a game appearing in the recommended ones: if your game has a rating higher than “mixed”, then the algorithm does not care about a specific percentage of positive reviews. There is no code associated with the “80% positive reviews” value.

The third most popular reason is random recommendations designed to improve Valve’s algorithms. According to Johnson, the system only takes into account purchases and time spent in the game. If you add a game to your wishlist, click on the “hide” button or on the “next” button, the algorithm will ignore your actions and will not even try to extract information about your preferences from them.

The fourth most popular reason is “high rating on Metacritic”. Here, apparently, the “yes-no” system also works: the algorithm is not interested in a specific rating number. Such an inscription is very rare – Steam, for obvious reasons, pays more attention to internal indicators than ratings on third-party sites.

36 games out of 672 appeared in Johnson’s recommended as “new games on Steam”. Thus, the site provides a little additional traffic to newly released games – games older than ten days do not fall into this category.

The remaining two categories are discount games and top sellers. The latter, apparently, is most often used for popular pre-orders – games that have not yet been released do not fall into the “popular” category.

Apparently, the main parameter that really affects the appearance of the game in the recommendations is the number of new reviews. The user’s personal preferences either really do not play any role, or this part of the algorithm is completely hidden from users.

Of the games shown to Johnson, 543 were already out, 109 were in early access, 18 were available for pre-order, and two were not available in any form.

6.8% of the games recommended to the developer contained the tag “virtual reality” – although he does not have a VR helmet. Considering that VR games occupy about 10% of the Steam catalog, according to Johnson, it cannot be argued that Valve artificially promotes such projects.

60.9% of the games recommended by the service contained the “indie” tag – while the share of such games in the store is 72%. Apparently, the algorithm prefers games without such a tag.

If you use the recommended queue too actively, sooner or later you will see an inscription that you have already watched a sufficient number of games suitable for you personally, and in the future you will be shown less suitable ones. During the experiment, Johnson saw this inscription nine times.

According to the developer, such a message, firstly, irritates the player – they seem to hint that he overworked the Steam algorithms with his requests, and secondly, misleads him. The system showed Johnson only the tip of the iceberg of Steam’s gigantic library – mostly popular new games – and instead of going to study it further in search of old and unpopular projects that are ideal for the player, it seems to be giving up. The Steam recommendation algorithm is clearly unwilling to help him find “hidden treasures”.

The relevancy system (“Would you like this game?”) is largely based on matched tags: 72% of the time, Steam made guesses based on this information. Steam games are tagged by both users and developers themselves, resulting in chaos and huge amounts of “garbage” data that makes it difficult for the Steam recommendation system to work. According to Johnson, Valve is working to reduce the reliance of algorithms on tags.

In the developer’s own judgment, Steam’s guesses based on tags have rarely been helpful. For example, Johnson does not play either RPG or horror games – but due to the fact that such tags are present in Bioshock, which he recently completed, the algorithm can draw incorrect conclusions about his preferences.

Another popular explanation is that this game is similar to other games you have played. This explanation of relevance appeared in 18.6% of cases.

Looking at the statistics, the developer noticed strange trends: Out There Somewhere was used as a benchmark on 43 occasions—nearly twice as many as its closest competitor—despite Johnson playing it for less than twenty minutes. For some reason, Steam decided that this game was very important for it, but Into the Breach (46 hours, 11 cases) and Overcooked (11 hours, 3 cases) were not.

The algorithm does not seem to take into account the time spent in the game, and studies only those games that the user has launched in the last year. Thus, information that Johnson spent hundreds of hours in FTL: Faster than Light a few years ago does not exist for the recommendation system – and in fact it could clearly be useful.

The rest of the games were marked as “relevant” by the algorithm due to popularity (68 games), top seller status (15 games), and recommendations from curators (89games) and friends (6 games). 475 games were flagged due to positive reviews, and one, NBA2K19, was flagged as “not relevant” due to negative reviews.

According to Johnson, it is impossible to objectively assess how well the recommendation system works – because there is no way to find out which games the service could recommend to the player, but did not. However, the experiment still allows us to draw some conclusions.

Johnson notes two significant points: first, Steam for some reason keeps recommending anime-style “adult” games to him (59games out of 672), although he never showed interest in this kind of content. Steam makes it possible to ban “anime” and “nudity” tags – but if you do this, VA-11 Hall-A and This is the Police, for example, will disappear from the recommended ones.

Also, the developer drew attention to the “list of tags that are most often present in games that you add to ignored” compiled by Steam – the store suggests excluding these tags from the issue in the settings. The list of tags is as follows: indie, action, adventure, single player, multiplayer, RPG, great soundtrack, casual, strategy, atmospheric, story deep, horror, survival, simulation, first person, open world, 2D, anime, shooter. Approximately the same tags were present in the games that the algorithm considered the most relevant for Johnson.