Reference Ace › Guides › The reference check questions NZ employers actually ask
Know the script before your referee does.
Dates of employment, title, what your role involved, your strengths, anything you needed to work on, why you left, attendance and reliability, and whether they would rehire you.
Not lies, vagueness. They were great, really good worker scores far lower than a specific story with a number in it. A brief fixes this without changing a single fact.
Would you rehire, and is there anything you would want us to know, are the two questions a brief should cover explicitly, in advance.
Yes, they are standard. The Reference Ace practice check runs the exact set on you and your referees so nothing lands cold.
No. Reference questions must be relevant to work performance, and discrimination on any Human Rights Act ground is off limits at every stage.
It happens constantly, and it costs offers. A one-page brief with agreed true talking points removes almost all of it.
Reference Ace checks real examples of your work, confirms they're yours, and vouches for them to employers by name, always as an independent reviewer and never as a former boss. Got a referee already? We brief them and run the practice check before a real employer calls.
See how it works and pricing