Pathetic.. Mr. Stuart, per your example, you based your hiring/advancing decision for a candidate with good credentials on a ’10 minute phone-call to a friend’ and possibly hearsay/rumors from him/her, whose relationship with the candidate is unknown at best???

So you choose to trust unsubstantiated statements than personal judgement after interviews.

And you call yourself an HR person!!!! People like you being gatekeepers are the reason good hires do not get in and bad hires, or your personal friends, get hired in droves despite ridiculous qualifications.

Shame on you, shame on the hiring manager who trusts you to get candidates to him/her.

Fortune, you have some reputation to maintain. Please do not give really bad HR apples like this a place to air their views.

‘Once we were seriously considering hiring a candidate, and had internal pressure from our hiring manager to fill the position immediately. We looked at the candidate’s work history and noticed they had previously spent time at a company where a friend of mine used to work. I called my friend and discovered some work-ethic issues about this candidate that could not be learned from a résumé or an interview, and we decided not to offer them a position. A quick 10-minute call saved a lot of wasted time, money and drama.”