Tampa Workplace Examiner: Aggregate your employment references

Tampa Workplace Examiner: Aggregate your employment references

Here is a link to a web site called ReferenceBot which allows you to aggregate references from colleagues and former employers in one place under one profile.

Up until a couple of years ago, it was very common to receive a resume by mail. Opening the envelope, you would typically see a cover letter, a resume, and very often, a few short letters of recommendation.

Today job search has evolved. Resumes templates for sites like Monster are ubiquitous and seen far more often than a resume delivered by the United State Postal Service. The job boards also provide formatted cover letters. Quite often, these are the only documents a potential employer ever sees.

It is more difficult to include those letter of recommendation. LinkedIn has an online recommendation capability that allows you to store recommendations from former employers and colleagues on your LinkedIn profile. These are helpful, but not ideal.

What do you do to get a number of references that you can store and make easily available?

One possible solution is a new web site called ReferenceBot. ReferenceBot will automatically collect your references and showcase them in your own custom URL. ReferenceBot is currently in beta, having just launched this month.

The developers of ReferenceBot describe their product as the first "Internet professional reference repository".

Here is how ReferenceBot works: (from the developers blog)

• If your company is looking to hire a new employee (or subcontract a consultant), this employee/consultant will give you references. Instead of contacting references one by one, ReferenceBot will send them a link where they can respond questionnaires and/or write a letter of recommendation with a single click. ReferenceBot will also alert you when a reference responds, allowing you to centralize all prospects and references.
• At the same time, if you are marketing your business and want to showcase what your customers say about your product/service, ReferenceBot also helps you collect and showcase what these happy customers have to say, and have all of them in one single place. This allows you to send your prospect customers a link, i.e. www.referencebot.com/mycompany, where they can see all the nice things they say about you.
• One other interesting feature is the cross-linking of references. Say you intend to hire a candidate. They have provided you with a reference from their former employer. This employer writes a reference about the candidate. Mr Prospect. If the candidate opens an account on ReferenceBot, Mr Company's comments will be automatically added to their profile. This allows the candidate to already have a reference in his profile to showcase to other/future employers. The employer will not have to write that reference again. Same applies if you enter a prospect that is already in the system, you will be able to see/read all his references.

Needless to say the application is free to use and also free of advertising. Get more information and sign up here

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