Every boss dreams of the day a bad employee decides to up and leave the company – but what if that employee is your friend, and wants you to give them a reference?

On this week’s ‘So You Think You’re an Adult’ segment, one letter writer is unsure whether or not they should recommend their friend to a new job.

“I’m in a tricky situation with a good friend of mine,” he told Moncrieff.

“I run a tech startup and this guy essentially works for me, yet we’ve been friends since college.

“However, he is now moving on to new pastures and his next prospective employer is looking for a reference.

“My friend has asked me to provide one - normally, this wouldn’t be a problem.

“However, this guy, while a brilliant mate – great craic and a lovely fellow – is also lazy, unmotivated, sloppy with deadlines, unfocused and pretty unproductive.

“I realise I could write him a glowing reference full of rubbish, but the problem is this – our sector is niche, and I know that a positive reference will reflect poorly on my judgement once the new employer realises how incompetent he is.

“What should I do?”

A man sleeping at an office desk, 22-2-14. Image: Tony Tallec / Alamy

Broadcaster Dee Reddy said that if possible, it might be best to dodge giving this friend a reference at all.

“I would have taught in the tech industry – it's not a case of just writing an e-mail, there’d probably be an expectation of taking a phone call and being asked direct questions,” she said.

“In which case, that’s why I think this sort of reputational issue is there for the person who’s sent this in.

“So, I really do think cutting your friend off by saying, ‘Oh look, I don’t have a good relationship with that company or with that hiring manager’, might be the best way to go, so that they can potentially ask someone else.”

Someone else's problem

TV personality Declan Buckley said that the responsibility could also be pushed onto another employee instead.

“I do think that when it comes to things like this, is that in the first instance kind of go, ‘I don’t give out references’ - but if you’re kind of being hit on hard by a mate to, ‘Do a good one for me please’, maybe have a deflection,” he said.

“Go, ‘Well, I didn’t hang out with you that much on that job, maybe ask [another employee] because they worked for the project – and basically throw them under the bus.

“At the end of the day, I think that most people know that references are kind of a dodgy smoky area to get into.

“Most people will kind of have these really vague references that they gave out.”

Dee said that the friends new job most likely just wanted to confirm that this person's dates of employment line up correctly.

She recommended that if the person were to give the reference, they keep it as vague and purely factual as possible.

Listen back here;