Hey there. Orianna here from Fortune.
Job seekers, be warned: The toxic manager you deliberately left off your reference list might already be on the phone with your future boss. The CEO of the $4.8 billion software company Netskope has revealed he doesn’t just call the names candidates hand over—he also tracks down the ones they left off, to find out what they’re really like.
“We do a heck of a lot of background checks and references, and a lot of those references are literally just on cultural fit,” Netskope chief Sanjay Beri exclusively told me. “So we will try to find people they know, maybe the references they didn’t give.”
It means (for Netskope applicants anyway) the coworker you butted heads with two jobs ago or the manager you conveniently left off the reference list could already be on a phone call about you before you’ve even had your final interview.
“I always ask a candidate, ‘tell me your interpersonal style’ and ‘tell me what happens when you have a disagreement or conflict,’” Beri said, while adding that he’ll ask the exact same question to the candidate’s former employers.
“How do they handle conflict? How do they handle when they have to do something that they disagree with? What happens in hard times?”
Since launching in 2012, Netskope has scaled fast: It hit unicorn status in 2018, went public on the Nasdaq last year, and now operates in over 220 countries with more than 3,000 employees. That kind of growth means a lot of hiring, fast—and Beri said one bad apple is all it takes to unravel a culture that took years to build.
So he wants to know how someone behaves in the trenches, as much as in the wins, since, as he put it, building a business is “a jagged line up.”
And the CEO will even ask references—listed or unlisted—how the candidate got on with peers in typically clashing departments to really test their personality.
“I would ask, ‘So what does the marketing person think of the head of sales?’ There are often some textbook healthy conflicts—and I want to know what those people think.”
—Orianna Rosa Royle
Success Associate Editor, Fortune
Got a career tip or dilemma? Get in touch: orianna.royle@fortune.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, TikTok, X, and Instagram.
