Job offer withdrawn due to insufficient detail in references

Manxman_in_exile

74jax said:

HerefordAl said:

I am just utterly stumped as to why they couldn't go back for more information, even when I had provided them with the contact details for the references again, including my most recent manager in the NHS. I have never had anything like this happen to me before and find it completely bewildering. It has left me feeling extremely down because, as mentioned, I turned down 2 other jobs and several interview opportunities after accepting what was in essence, my dream job using my Degree in Child & Adolescent Mental Health.

Hi I know it's only your first thread, so just in case you haven't been 'lurking' on this board it's a good idea to not consider you have the job until you have a signed unconditional job offer.  
We advise on this board not to hand your current notice in until you are in possession of this too.  It's hard, I understand, especially when you feel you could potentially mess an employer about, but as you have found - you are now on the receiving end of being messed around and have come out with no job, having been offered 3. 
I really feel for you in such circumstances, but they have clearly made their minds up, and quickly too.   
Good luck and I'm sure having been offered 3 jobs you won't be long in waiting for the 4th.

I agree with all that too. 

Undervalued

Brynsam said:

TELLIT01 said:

It won't help for that job, but you might consider contacting the surgery for clairification of what additional information was required in order that you don't find yourself in the same situation with a future application.

Just don't expect a reply.

What looks likely here is that the surgery failed to ask for the information they needed at the time references were requested - your referees have already confirmed they were happy to supply more details, so that conclusion is rather hard to avoid.

If it's not too late, you could always try re-applying. What do you have to lose?

Sorry to be blunt but equally hard to avoid is the conclusion that the surgery, for whatever reason, have changed their mind about employing the OP and are using the "insufficiently detailed" references as an excuse.

As you say, given that they have re-advertised, there would clearly be time to go back to the referees for more details if they wanted to. However they clearly don't want to so I am afraid, unless there is a genuine unlawful discrimination angle to this, all the OP can do is move on.

Unless the OP has had the references disclosed, which is not quite as easy as it once was, it is possible that there is something in one of the that has made the surgery uneasy and "insufficiently detailed" is a convenient euphemism. 

Manxman_in_exile

That's a possibility as well, although I think an employer who offers a job subject to satisfactory references but then withdraws the offer for other reasons is pretty !!!!!!.

Is it more difficult to find out what's in a reference these days?  Recruiting was only an incidental part of my role and I'm going back a few years now, but I thought references had always been confidential until access became easier a few years ago, and referees then became much more circumspect about what they said?  I thought that was one reason why simple, basic, fact based references were given these days.

(In my own case, I was always extremely grateful to my line manager for telling me about my 'phone reference when he almost certainly shouldn't have done.)

Marcon

Undervalued said:

Brynsam said:

TELLIT01 said:

It won't help for that job, but you might consider contacting the surgery for clairification of what additional information was required in order that you don't find yourself in the same situation with a future application.

Just don't expect a reply.

What looks likely here is that the surgery failed to ask for the information they needed at the time references were requested - your referees have already confirmed they were happy to supply more details, so that conclusion is rather hard to avoid.

If it's not too late, you could always try re-applying. What do you have to lose?

Sorry to be blunt but equally hard to avoid is the conclusion that the surgery, for whatever reason, have changed their mind about employing the OP and are using the "insufficiently detailed" references as an excuse.

As you say, given that they have re-advertised, there would clearly be time to go back to the referees for more details if they wanted to. However they clearly don't want to so I am afraid, unless there is a genuine unlawful discrimination angle to this, all the OP can do is move on.

Unless the OP has had the references disclosed, which is not quite as easy as it once was, it is possible that there is something in one of the that has made the surgery uneasy and "insufficiently detailed" is a convenient euphemism. 

Rather silly of them if they've done that, since it is far from impossible to find out what a reference says. Sounds like incompetence on the part of the clown doing the recruiting. Either way, it's really rough on OP.