I'm a college student. My most recent employment was as an intern at a small financial advisory firm (with a lot of assets) for three months. It was fun and I learned a lot but I failed in my sales roles because I had very little support from the senior advisors, and I made that clear in interviews.
Recently, while interviewing for other jobs, I got a call for them. Turns out an HR rep at some place doing background checks basically told them every single negative thing I said about them in the interviews even though that was a very small part of what I had said about them. They were not happy and I was told that I should not use them as a reference anymore. This is an issue because this is my only serious period of employment, the rest of it being spent doing regular campus gruntwork.
Wat do?
>>1109152
Does 1 reference really make that big of a difference? You can still talk about your experience there. Someone with as little experience as you shouldn't really be depending on previous employer references anyway.
Just talk up any major projects you've done in classwork or extracurricular activities. And focus on the positives you got out of your internship, not the negatives.
>>1109152
Do you have any documentation of this? You can sue the HR rep (or, rather her company). And you should.
>>1109211
If anyone calls them from now on, the best they'll do is verify my employment, which might turn some future employers off. These guys were stellar references before (I had it checked) and I think they felt betrayed or something by what I said.
>>1109240
No documentation. I just got a call from my old boss telling me what happened and not to use them as a reference anymore.
>>1109152
Call the reference and tell them about the interview and what you said. Tell them that you don't know what was said, but that you never talked down about the company and don't understand why they said that. Deny deny deny
Make up a story about why what they said was false.
