If you’ve ever asked for structured references, you know the real work isn’t in the call. It’s before.
It’s sitting down with a role and deciding: which skills genuinely matter for this position? Which four or five, if they fail, make the hire go wrong? And then: what do I ask referees so their answers let me compare one candidate against another, rather than pile up loose opinions?
That upfront work is exactly what separates a structured reference from an informal chat. And it’s also the first thing sacrificed when you’re pressed for time.
✗ Starting from scratch
A blank page for every role
Different questions per candidate
Answers you can’t compare
An afternoon of prep work
✓ With StarmyCV
Skills suggested from the job description
The same questions for everyone
Candidates you can actually compare
Minutes to review and adjust
“Rigour isn’t lost through lack of judgement. It’s lost through lack of time at the very first step.”
This is where StarmyCV starts
When you create a process, you don’t start from a blank page. You paste in the job description you already have, and StarmyCV suggests a starting point: which skills are worth assessing for that role and what to ask the referees.
📄Paste the job description
🎯Skills and questions suggested
✏️You adjust it
🚀Process ready
It isn’t magic, and it doesn’t try to replace your judgement: it’s a draft so you don’t start from zero.
Example · skills suggested for the role
Team leadership★★★★★
Client communication★★★★★
Managing priorities★★★★★
The suggestion is editable from start to finish
Is there a skill that’s critical for this client and the system didn’t prioritise it? Add it. Is a question redundant, or would you rather phrase it your way? Change it.
The system does the heavy lifting — starting from the job description and proposing a sensible structure. You bring what only you know: the client’s context, the team’s culture, that nuance that isn’t written in any job description.
The result works two ways
An afternoon
Setting it up by hand
→
⏱️
You gain time
You go from “an afternoon setting up the process” to “a few minutes reviewing a suggestion”.
⚖️
You can compare
The same questions for every candidate: answers you can put side by side.
Without that shared framework, each reference is an anecdote. With it, it’s information.
What this saves you as a recruiter: rigour no longer depends on how much time you happen to have that afternoon. You always start from a solid base, fine-tune it in minutes, and launch the process with the structure already sorted.
What comes next
Once the process is set up, two questions remain that almost nobody solves well:
- 1How references get collected without you chasing anyone.
- 2How you know the person assessing is who they say they are.
That’s what we cover in the next instalment.
More soon.
