I got laidoff, can I ask my old bosses to be references. I was rated well in my performance but not sure why I was laid off. Or will this be like shooting myself in the foot? Please help.
6 replies (most recent on top)
Think of the people you have helped the most in your work there. The more senior the better. Invite them to write you a LinkedIn recommendation. Draft it for them and tell them you took the liberty to draft it to save them time since they are so busy. Simply invite them to use all, some or none of the text. If an employer emails or calls your old manager at Schwab they will probably not reply due to policy. And BTW, most companies don;t check references anymore anyway. If you have LinkedIn recommendations, you can copy/paste them into a nicely formatted document that you can print and take to your in-person interview. Very compelling.
Official Schwab policy is not to do it for the reasons an earlier poster cited.
However, in my own experience, I am happy to do it for anyone who wasn't a bad employee (which are few and far between) through direct channels. If you and your managers were on good terms, reach out and they should be agreeable. If they're not, then you wouldn't want them saying anything about you in the first place.
Unfortunately I keep getting the response that they’re “not allowed to” provide recommendations per company policy. They’re afraid that if a bad recommendation is given, we will sue Schwab for defamation of character. It’s really disheartening and frankly making it really tough to get recommendations that I need for various things I am pursuing.
I was laid off too. My Manager told me to reach out any time for a reference if needed. Usually they’ll gladly do it.
Of course you can unless you had a bad relationship with your bosses. All my past bosses were happy to. They probably can't use company letterhead or email but that's fine. What's important is the reference and the content. Good luck.
If you have a personal relationship with them yes. Email them to their gmail if possible or text. No company email. Then the bosses don't feel that company is potentially seeing and tracking this.