Thank you for your question!

In general, all agencies and clients you might be interviewing with, will want to see your references. This will give future employers and agencies a good idea of your previous work experiences and perhaps your work ethic and character. Most agencies and future employers would prefer professional references over Character references, but sometimes these are requested too.

When going for an interview, make sure you have at least 2 or 3 references, ideally from your most recent positions. This will give your potential new employer a good idea of what you have been doing in the last couple of years of your career, which most likely is much more relevant than jobs from years ago. As agencies have a duty of care towards their clients, they will most likely ask for contact details from your references; email addresses and phone numbers. This so they can verify the reference was indeed correct. At Polo & Tweed, we normally check at least 2 recent references to be able to register with us. Have a read here, to give you much more detailed information on what kind of references to provide, what to do when you have a negative reference, who can act as your referee, and much more!

Feel free to drop us a line if you would like to go through more details of the world of references, and we’d be more than happy to help.

Kind regards,
Aafke – Polo & Tweed