Higher education · Question bank

Reference check questions for postdoctoral researchers

Questions for the advisors, collaborators and lab staff who worked beside a postdoc candidate, to learn what the candidate did on their own and how they work in a shared lab.

By Never Ending SolutionsPublished October 8, 20265 min read

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Key takeaways

A publication list shows what a lab produced. References can tell you which parts the candidate chose, designed, ran and wrote.
Ask about independence, data records, conduct in a shared lab and how the candidate treated the students they supervised.
Start with the doctoral advisor or current supervisor, then add a collaborator or lab manager outside that relationship.
A quick call to a colleague who knows the candidate is still a reference: ask the candidate first and use your standard questions.

A postdoc candidate’s publication list shows what a lab produced, not what the candidate did in it. Author order rarely tells you who chose the question, who designed the methods or who rescued the project when the first approach failed. The people who worked beside the candidate can, and they can also tell you how the candidate shared equipment, kept records and treated the students around them.

Decide before the calls what the position needs most. A fellow who will set their own direction calls for different questions than a postdoc hired to carry out a funded project, and references should hear the questions that fit the job you are filling.

Who to ask

The doctoral advisor or current postdoctoral supervisor, who saw the candidate’s research day to day and knows what they contributed.
A thesis committee member or collaborator outside the candidate’s group, who can separate the candidate’s ideas from the supervisor’s.
A lab manager, staff scientist or core facility director, for how the candidate shared instruments, kept records and followed safety rules.
A student the candidate mentored, when supervising students will be part of the position.

Questions to ask, by competency

Choose the competencies that matter most for the position and two or three questions from each. Ask every reference the same set, and when an answer is a rating, ask for the example behind it.

Research independence

A postdoc position is the step from carrying out a supervisor’s plan to designing work of one’s own. Co-authored papers rarely show how far along that path the candidate is.

Think of the candidate’s main dissertation chapter or current project: who chose the question, who designed the methods and who did the analysis?
Tell me about an experiment or analysis that failed. How did the candidate work out why, and what did they try next?
How much revision did the candidate’s drafts of papers or fellowship proposals need before they were ready to submit?
Compared with the doctoral students and postdocs you have supervised, how would you rate the candidate’s readiness to run a project without day-to-day direction? (rating)

Data and research integrity

Every paper from a lab rests on records that someone else can follow. A candidate’s habits with data, code and notebooks matter more than any single result.

How did the candidate record and store data and code? Could someone else in the group rerun their analysis from those records?
Tell me about a result that did not support the hypothesis. How did the candidate report it to you and in writing?
How did the candidate handle authorship order on a shared paper when contributions were uneven?

Lab citizenship

Labs share instruments, computing time, protocols and chores, and one careless or territorial member slows everyone else.

How did the candidate treat shared instruments, computing resources and duties such as ordering supplies or safety checks?
When a lab mate needed help with a method the candidate knew well, what did the candidate do?

Mentoring students

Many postdocs supervise graduate and undergraduate students day to day, often for the first time, and those students’ training depends on how they do it.

Tell me about a student the candidate supervised. What did the student learn, and how did the candidate respond to the student’s mistakes?
How did the candidate balance time spent training students against their own project deadlines?

Close the reference

End every reference the same way: ask whether they would hire or work with the candidate again and why, what support would help the candidate do their best work, and whether there is anything else you should know. The general question bank explains why the first of these matters most.

Checks a reference does not replace

The doctorate. Confirm the degree was conferred, or the defense date if it is still pending, with the graduate school or registrar of the awarding institution.
Papers listed as accepted or in press, against the journal’s acceptance notice or the published record.
Funding the candidate expects to bring, such as a fellowship, against the funder’s award notice.

Warning signs to follow up

References who describe the lab’s findings in detail but cannot say which experiments or analyses the candidate ran.
The doctoral advisor is missing from the list, with no explanation from the candidate. There can be good reasons, so ask.
A correction or retraction on a paper the candidate led, without a clear account of what went wrong.
Authorship disputes that recur from one project to the next.
A lab manager who mentions repeated friction over shared equipment, or students who asked to stop working with the candidate.

One warning sign is a reason to ask another question, not a verdict. Reference check red flags covers how to check a concern fairly.

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Questions to leave out

Ask only about the work. Before an offer, the EEOC’s guidance says an employer may not ask a third party, such as a former employer, any question it could not ask the candidate directly. Leave out health, medical leave, age, family plans and other protected characteristics. What to leave out has the full list.

Common questions

Should a postdoc candidate’s PhD advisor be a reference?

Usually, yes. The advisor has normally seen more of the candidate’s research than anyone else, and Canada’s Public Service Commission advises starting with recent immediate supervisors. If the advisor is not on the list, ask the candidate why before drawing conclusions, and add a second faculty member who knows the work.

Is a quick call to a colleague who knows the candidate a reference check?

Yes, and it needs the same care as any other. Ask the candidate before calling: Penn State’s faculty affairs guidance, for example, allows off-list references only with the candidate’s permission. This matters most for a current supervisor, who may not know the candidate is applying. Ask your standard questions and write the answers down.

Do you need references if the candidate sent letters of recommendation?

Yes. Letters are written for the candidate, often for several positions at once, and cover what the writer chooses. A reference check asks the questions your project needs answered, such as how independently the candidate worked. Letters of recommendation vs. reference checks shows how to use both.

Sources

Public Service Commission of Canada, Structured reference checks. Checked October 8, 2026.
Penn State Faculty Affairs, Conducting Reference Checks. Checked October 8, 2026.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Enforcement Guidance: Preemployment Disability-Related Questions and Medical Examinations. Checked October 8, 2026.

About this guide

Written and kept up to date by Never Ending Solutions, the company that builds NES ReferenceCheck. Outside facts are cited with the date we checked them, and the advice works with or without our software. Read our editorial standards.