So I found out about a month ago from a colleague that my current firm does not give references whatsoever. From what I understand, this includes HR speaking to prospective employers as well. I confirmed this to be true, but want to know how common something like this is. The rationale from what I was told is that since we are small (50 total employees) that they just rather not speak about any employees, former or current due to legal liability issues potentially.
Has anyone encountered this? If so, when you interview for a new role somewhere else and they ask, should I just say “You can try to contact them, sure. However, I do know that firm policy states no information about past/present employees is given”.