Off the record references
Do you or anyone you know do these? Talking about a casual call to the candidate's current employer or past employer before the stage where the candidate officially provides references. Current MF associate recruiting for lateral MF associate opportunities (two opportunities being at firms that my current firm has a close relationship with, have done club deals together, MDs know each other well). Long story short, based on his comments and recent change of demeanor towards me, I'm 99% sure my MD knows that I've been recruiting, and my guess is that one of the aforementioned firms did an "off the record" reference and/or just spilled the beans to my MD. Is this a common occurrence in the industry? Highly, highly unprofessional IMO. Damage is likely already done, but curious how often this happens.
Happened to me too. Very snakey and unprofessional on both ends 1) to not give you a heads up by at least asking who you’ve worked with so you can respectively let them know a call is coming ahead of time and 2) the MD for changing his attitude towards you. It’s not like analysts don’t recruit every fucking year I don’t know why seniors aren’t supportive across the board
Happened to me as well.
Both firms I got offers from when I was recruiting did them when I was going banking->PE. Lateral should have more sensitivity around it...
I absolutely do off-list references, but I have always understood it to be mandatory that this occur after extending an offer and receiving references from the candidate.
If your question is "Do prospective employers talk to more people than you list", the answer is unequivocally yes. If your question is "Are some people clueless, inconsiderate, or malicious enough to talk about your candidacy before you've mutually gotten far enough for it to be safe for you", the answer is also obvious.
This sucks for you, I'm sorry that it happened. There isn't much advice to offer, but one pointer would be to approach a situation like the one you described with a tremendous measure of care. This one seems highly inevitable given the facts you've shared. Firms doing club deals together probably got to that point because the seniors there knew each other long ago, like college. There's often an unspoken, sometimes even fairly explicit "Don't take my guys, I won't take yours" agreement.
You may have accidentally walked across a tripwire here. You can minimize the likelihood of that by avoiding firms with high social proximity.
Very helpful. Not sure whether OP’s situation is as inevitable as you make it out to be (not saying you’re wrong). I mean, between say KKR / BX / APO / H&F / CG / TPG, there have been all different combos of club deals (medline itself included three of them), yet I’ve seen people lateral between them from all levels between senior associate to partner (e.g. jagannath) between them.
Yea, OP’s situation sucks and is kind of a catch 22: the groups that best know of your ability and are familiar with you are the ones you’ve closely worked together / clubbed up with in the past, but those situations sometimes ends up in the OP’s predicament.
Very messed up to check with someone who works at your current employer if it is not an official reference. This is a downright shitty thing to do.
But we absolutely check off the record references if we know someone who may have known you at a previous firm.
Was recruiting for an internship role at a well-known UMM PE. They reached out to a partner at my previous internship without saying anything (the partner called me).
Off sheets are pretty typical from what I've seen. Haven't heard much about people going out of their way to find an off sheet reference if they don't already have a contact there, but if you know somebody at that firm, they're probably getting a call eventually. Agree it's a pretty shit thing to do if you're still an employee at the firm and don't think I've ever heard of that happening, but for prior employees, have seen that happen mid-process before offer stage, and have also seen the interview process end as a result of them.
The off sheet references, it's a crap shoot. 99% chance that someone in your firm is not fond of you, or even jealous and you might not even know about it.
Yeah, you'd at least hope that people are reaching out only to others they know well and trust and therefore take more stock in their opinion, vs. reaching out to somebody who was simply opposite a random deal they worked on years ago but don't actually know well, but I guess you never know
Happens all the time unfortunately. Especially when potential employers start calling brokers for information before they call your references. In my experience brokers start rumours because that's what they do best. Saw an occurrence where a broker tried to get into good graces with a CIO and 'spilled the beans' about a VP that was interviewing at another firm. The CIO confronted the VP who admitted and he as let go the same day. Be careful who you tell you are interviewing at all times. Better yet, don't say anything at all until an offer letter is signed and dry.
Dick move by the CIO and shame on the broker.
These definitely are done but (should be done) only after the candidate has received a written offer.
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of references in general? What if the company conducts off the record references and finds out something bad? Will they rescind the offer? What makes the most sense to me is when the candidate is far along in the process, and done with ex-employers, not the current employer (as was the case for OP).
It's a luck of the draw. I've seen people that came through with stellar references but turned out horrible to work with, and vice versa, someone with off-sheet negative hit but turned out great co worker team player. The most important is the interview and how you get on with that person during and after the interview.
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