It is a simple question. In executive hiring, it is one of the few that actually determines whether a decision holds up over time. What is striking is how inconsistently we apply the principle regarding recommendations as a key tool for decisions.
We take restaurant advice from strangers, read reviews written by people we will never meet, and before hiring a contractor we ask the neighbour who used them last summer. In most areas of life, seeking outside perspective before we commit is instinctive.
Then a senior leadership decision lands on the table. An appointment that will shape an organisation for years, and somehow the standard drops. Two reference calls are made at the end of the process, both names provided by the candidate. We call it due diligence. More often, it is confirmation bias formalised.
At this level, that is not a minor flaw. It is a material risk. A senior hire shapes far more than delivery. It affects culture, pace, decision quality and, over time, enterprise value. When the reference work is thin, the margin for error disappears.
The question is not whether to use recommendations, but how, when and how much weight they should carry. Recommendations matter, but they are not the entire work.
The work is building an accurate, complete and verified picture.
That requires structured assessment, a clear understanding of the role and its context, and a disciplined approach to interpreting past performance. What was skill, what was timing, and what was environment.
There is also a structural shift behind this.
CVs and interviews have always been self-reported. Today, much of their signal has been diluted further. AI has standardised how experience is presented, with the same language, the same structure and the same framing of achievements.
That does not make them irrelevant. It makes them insufficient.
At senior level, the question is no longer what is presented. It is what can be independently verified.
Not simply whether a target was achieved, but how it was achieved, what changed in the organisation along the way, and what happened when results did not follow the plan.
This is where recommendation work, done properly, becomes decisive.
In practice, this work rarely starts with formal ask for recommendations. It starts with conversations.
In Executive search we speak to people in our network every day, all year, who have worked closely with relevant individuals and ask a simple question. Who would you trust in a role like this, and why?
We discuss names and test perspectives over time. In some cases, the same individual is mentioned independently from different directions, without prompting. That is where the signal begins.
At that stage, we are not discussing a specific process or disclosing a candidate’s situation. We are building an external view of capability, judgement and track record based on people who have seen the work from the inside.
What matters in the end is not opinion. It is pattern.
We want to understand who has actually seen this person operate up close, who understands how results were produced rather than simply that they were, and what holds true across different environments.
A single reference proves very little. Several independent perspectives, pointing in the same direction and aligning with direct observation, provide something far more reliable. Occasionally, it is the outlier that matters most.
We ran a search for a Commercial Director. On paper, there were stronger candidates. The individual we kept coming back to had not fully succeeded in her most recent role. The numbers were mixed and the narrative could easily be read as underperformance.
Early in the process, the recommendation picture told a different story. Across multiple conversations, from different parts of her career, the same pattern emerged. Strong commercial judgement, high internal trust and a consistent ability to build teams that performed over time. There was also a recurring theme that the context in the most recent role had been more complex than the outcome suggested. We brought that picture to the client early, before the process had narrowed. It challenged the initial view and reframed the candidate. The decision was not obvious, but it was informed. That individual was appointed. Six years later, she is the CEO of the group.
That illustrates the difference between reported performance and understood performance.
This becomes even more important at senior level. Outcomes are shaped by market conditions, timing, organisational dynamics and team composition, not just the individual. Without that context, strong results can flatter the wrong person and weaker ones can hide a very capable one.
Relying on a narrow reference base at that level is not just incomplete. It is careless.
We apply the same standard to ourselves.
We encourage clients to speak to anyone in their network who knows us, or to ask us for specific references. If that does not create clarity and confidence, we should not be engaged.
That is not positioning. It is consistency.
Recommendations are not a shortcut. They are a way of improving accuracy. They are rarely the first step and never the only one, but often the step that confirms or challenges everything
At some point, your future will depend on what others say about you when you are not present. That happens in real decisions, in real time, without you in the room.
Your responsibility is not to manage what people say, but to ensure there are people who know your work well enough to describe it accurately.
A well-maintained network is not a soft asset. It is infrastructure. For us and for you.
In critical decisions, it is often the difference between conviction and costly uncertainty.
Article written by Ken Skoog, CFR Global Executive Search Sweden
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