A reference proves nothing on its own. A name and a number handed over with a warm word can mean the person really is who she says she is and worked where she says she worked – or it can mean a friend has agreed to say kind things down the phone. What decides which is not the call itself but the questions behind it. Most reference checks in Botswana fail not because people skip them but because they are ceremonial: a quick call, a vague “she was good”, a relieved goodbye, and nothing established that could not have been guessed.

The gap matters most in domestic work, where so much of the sector runs informally and a cleaner’s record exists only in the memories of the households she has served. There is no register to consult, no file to pull. Government is slowly building the scaffolding around this economy – the Informal Sector Recovery Plan, developed with United Nations Development Programme support, sets out to move informal workers towards formalisation and decent work, and the Assistant Minister of Trade and Entrepreneurship, Mr Baratiwa Mathoothe, has framed it as laying foundations for a sector long treated as invisible. But until that formalisation reaches the doorstep, the reference call is the main instrument a household has for turning a stranger’s history into something it can actually see. It is worth doing properly. Here are eight questions that make it work.

1. How long did she work for you, and when?

Start with dates, because they are the easiest thing to confirm and the hardest to fake convincingly. Ask for the period of employment and match it against what the cleaner told you. A former employer who cannot place the dates at all, or whose account is months out from hers, is telling you something before you have asked anything harder.

2. What was she actually responsible for?

Ask the referee to describe the job in their own words, rather than reading your list back to them. If the cleaner told you she ran a five-person household and ironed daily, the former employer should recognise that picture unprompted. When the two accounts of the same job do not match, the mismatch itself is the finding.

3. Would you employ her again?

This is the single most revealing question, because it forces a judgement rather than a description. A genuine reference answers it quickly and warmly. A hesitation, a qualified “yes, but”, or a pivot to something else is worth more than any praise that came before it. Listen to how the answer is given, not only to the word.

4. Why did she leave?

Ask the reason for the ending, then compare it with the cleaner’s own account. Families move, budgets change, people relocate – most departures are ordinary. What you are checking is whether the two stories agree. A departure the former employer describes very differently from the way the cleaner did is a thread worth pulling gently before you decide.

5. Was she reliable on time and attendance?

Reliability is the quality households most depend on and least discuss. Ask plainly whether she arrived when expected, gave notice when she could not come, and could be counted on through the week. Punctuality is a fact a former employer can report precisely, unlike vaguer virtues, so ask for it directly and take the specific answer over the general compliment.

6. Was there ever a question of trust?

Ask the difficult one, and ask it plainly: was anything ever missing, was there ever a concern about money or honesty? Most answers will be a clear no, and that clear no is exactly what you came for. What matters is that you asked directly rather than hoped; a referee given permission to raise a concern will usually take it, and one never asked will usually stay silent.

7. How did she handle correction?

A working relationship is tested less by good days than by the moment something goes wrong. Ask how she responded to feedback or a disagreement – whether she took it well, sulked, argued, or simply put it right. This tells you how the next few years will feel far better than a list of her strengths, because every long engagement eventually needs a difficult conversation.

8. Is there anything you wish you had known at the start?

End with the open question that catches what your specific ones missed. It invites the former employer to volunteer the one thing they would tell their past self – a habit, a preference, a friction. Sometimes the answer is nothing. Sometimes it is the most useful sentence of the whole call, and it only comes because you left room for it.

Verify, do not merely collect

The move that matters is to treat a reference as evidence to be tested, not a box to be ticked. This is the principle a platform such as Kleana builds into its verification: a listing reaches the “Kleana Verified” tier only when a person has sighted the cleaner’s Omang or passport and actually telephoned at least one long-term former employer – a real call, asking real questions, made by someone rather than assumed. You can hold yourself to the same standard whether or not you use a platform. Make the call yourself, ask these eight things, and listen to how they are answered. A reference you have genuinely tested is worth more than three you merely collected, and it is the difference between a decision and a hope.

Source: Kleana Africa – kleana.africa