Question for any employers/reference checkers

My friend was fired from her last job. Very quick questions- if she lists her prior employer as a reference (it's a large corporation), can the person giving the reference give the reason why she was fired, in detail? Or would they just say she was "terminated", with no further info given?

I'm in NY and we don't provide any reason for the termination. We give dates of employment and salary at termination. That's it. A lot of HR departments, especially in large companies, are gun-shy about being sued so most opt to say as little as possible.

while her former employer can't say she was fired, the lack of them saying anything, other than a verification of employment dates can be damning.

... but they are equally afraid of a de facto approval of a candidate when it can come back to bite them. At least at the corporation for which I last worked, standard policy was for HR to state the term of the employee's employment, but to also state if they left voluntarily or were terminated for cause, and to say nothing else.

Even professional reference contacts in that same corporation were to be forwarded to Human Resources. No one working directly with the person in question was to make any statement--it was all to be left to HR.

Unfortunately, this person, if deciding not to list the prior employer, may compound the deception if they state they worked somewhere else, since that can be checked. Stating that one was self-employed, if one's job specialty might suggest that, might be the lesser of undesirable options.

If you put down an employer as part of your work history, pretty much the only thing they can do is verify employment. As in, yes, this person worked for us on these dates.

HOWEVER, if your friend makes the mistake of providing a name and contact at that employer as a "professional reference", she's taking her career into her own hands. See, a professional reference is SUPPOSED to be asked, "Was this person any good? What did you think of her? Would she do well in this hypothetical situation?" And so on.

I turned away at least two people I can remember, precisely because one or more of the professional references they provided essentially said they were difficult to work with, were incompetent, or generally sucked.

...so much for your responses, they really helped alot. This is why I love DU. :)

Everyplace I've ever worked allowed us to share dates of employment, alary at termination and job title. One allowed us to say if the person quit or was terminated at employer option, but that was years ago and I doubt they allow that now. That was all we were allowed to tell, unless we had written permission from the pervious employee to give a more detailed reference.

We still managed to tell people what they wanted to know, mostly through tone of voice.

Exactly. :D

Unless it's a glowing one. I just verify dates of employment. I had to fire a very scary woman once, and I was afraid of her, so I just made a policy that any former employee about whom I wasn't absolutely ecstatic got a basic "yes, she worked for me from xxx to xxx" reference.

Which means that references, to me, aren't worth too much.