Advice on References

[livingdeb]

Today my boss asked me why I haven't been using him as a reference. I said I felt it was rude to ask him to encourage someone to hire me out from under him.

He said that people all across campus know him and they will be thinking that if I am afraid of listing my boss as a reference, especially if it's him, they won't be able to help thinking that something must be wrong with me.

I'm not so sure everyone would know who my boss was on seeing my resume, but he made it very clear that he would love being my reference. And after all these years I have convinced myself that he is not the sort to pretend something like that in order to get a better chance to make me look bad or anything, so I'm going to start listing him.

It seems really odd, but the three other people I asked were all gushing even more about how they'd love to be a reference for me. I don't even want to be a reference for me, why would someone else? I mean, how do you really know how well someone else will do in some job?

Comments

[indigo-rose99.livejournal.com]

I don't want to be a reference because it sounds like work. I cannot imagine why doing so would be a pleasure. Weird.

Maybe they are being insanely polite?

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have the social skills to tell the difference. Normally my philosophy is that if someone insists on being "insanely polite" instead of truthful, and then I ignorantly take them up on it, that's their problem, not mine. (At least in general US culture--obviously I wouldn't act like this in places where their idea of the "Your Mama..." game is to compliment each other or offer each other things to more and more staggering heights.)

But that philosophy is maybe less helpful when the people are offering you things that are important and that require them to have been truthful. Nah--they would just keep being insanely polite on the phone, right?