I have just received my reference from the company I am about to leave. It seems "OK" to me but I would like to seek a professional opinion - for example a lawyer who can correctly interpret it for me. Does anyone know of such a service? How much approx. would it cost?
Must say that, personally, as a previous employee and employer/Senior manager- I think you should be allowed to give a reference that tells the truth. To me, it devaluates all good and excellent references to not say so if there are concerns. However, in my experience and in my field (education) references which counted were generally the ones done directly and face to face or on the phone, where the truth can be told. Again, in my field a too glowing reference often meant that they wanted to push that person on (eg, get rid).
I agree, every Swiss reference I've read has been so artificial I've just ignored it as HR bulls**t. My own HR once warned that a reference had something less than a superlative for one of the skills, which I also ignored as HR bulls**t.
The only part I've ever found useful is the job description and any obviously free-format comments.
If I could be completely sure my reference is "uncoded", then I would be very happy with it. Code references are part of the system here though and I am sure that many Swiss employers and HR people do take them seriously. In many companies, hiring managers only get to see applications which have been previously filtered by HR. That's why I think it is worthwhile to have a professional opinion.
Would be interested in any feed back you get on this. However- if the person giving the professional opinion tells you that 'a+b+c' actually means 'xyz' - what can you do about it, if it is not to your liking?
Easy- but can you really ask HR to change the 'good' to 'excellent' because you don't like the 'good'? I don't get that- as said, it then devalues all the genuine and deserving 'excellent's, in my book.
As a 6th Form specialist, I had to manage UCAS references for Uni entrance- and the UCAS assessors/Uni selectors always said they read more between than on the lines.
Yes you can, it's a Swiss thing, especially if you have worked for a company for 5 years as you must have always worked to their fullest satisfaction or you would have been sacked.
A Swiss reference is of little value. Same can be said for most if you have a fool working for you better give him a good reference & he gets the first job he applies for.
I do know a situation at Goldman Sachs when 4 people left to set up a desk at another Bank, GS refused to give any reference whatsoever which caused a huge problem with the other Banks insurance company.
You can ask anything you like! But probably not HR, rather your manager who wrote the reference.
If you aren't happy I would definitely ask; but the main focus should be to get as much quality free-form stuff in that actually means something and catches the eye. Any good manager, i.e. one you want to work for, will be more interested in that.
Also bear in mind I'm talking about distinguishing between people who are generally pretty good at their chosen job; I've received a few CVs with lots of "meh" feedback, and also interviewed a couple with specific skills only to reject and confirm "meh" was the right level. So for me the formula bit is just a check for "good enough to bother interviewing".
Or use mine - check the Zeugnis doesn't have anything obviously negative or overly neutral. Then any company that rejects me at the HR stage because of my Zeugnis is not one I want to work for, so good result.
I wouldn't pay some ex-HR people to perpetuate this nonsense.
Honestly: the reference letter thing is a bit of a tradition and every Swiss/German/Austrian (where the letters are a thing) knows how to take them with a bucket load of salt. I think the attitude towards them has changed quite a lot over the last 15 years. Used to be an absolute must-have and employees had legal cases towards former employers when they weren't worded the way they wanted them. Nowadays they are far less important.
I usually ignore them completely when hiring and ask the candidate for references (as in people) to call. The only thing reliable on them is anyway the duration of the employment, everything else is hot air. Every single one of my own letters was either written by myself or some boiler plate text HR gave my manager.
I think the "subtlety" thing is a myth perpetuated by HR people. I've had completely different interpretations of the same "subtle" CV from different people in the same HR department.
If the difference is that subtle, you'd be a fool to take it as the basis of a recruitment decision. Individual interpersonal responses, company fit and so on are much more relevant and variable.
Unless you know the person who wrote the reference, interpreting any subtlety is not reliable.
Never a truer word spoken, with language subtleties, different mother tongues, i think and coding would be not only extremely difficult but so transparent as to be worthless.
There are so many HR people, all of whom would need to "be in the know" so it becomes useless as you cannot give a bad reference in CH and with a transparent code, it would not be possible
If you're in engineering or science of some sort, forget it and put nice keywords in your CV to get caught by HR screening.
If not, then you're at the mercy of subtleties. Does it look like boilerplate? You can check some common expressions at http://www.arbeitszeugnisgenerator.de . I think you can also ask a colleague to write a reference for you.