Should I provide a fabricated reference for a friend?
The lack of anonymity in replying is going to skew the answers you’re going to get in favour of those against. Very few people are going to pop in to say “Oh, yeah, I do the fake reference thing for my friends whenever they ask.” I haven’t, but I would have absolutely no qualms about lying to a huge faceless company to help a friend. However, for reasons pointed out above, I think it’s a bad idea in your case. You are fairly likely to be caught, and the consequences could be very severe. And, I just don’t see the reason for it. There is no law that says you must list your supervisor at your last job as a reference. I cherrypick my references and so does everyone. If the only people I think will say great things about me are a co-worker and a boss from 5 years ago, that is who I put. No one has ever asked me, “so why didn’t you put your boss from your last job?
Much like certain pages on the internet, this letter will be somewhere out there forever and could come back and bite you when you least expect it. I would agree with the posters who suggest you write him a glowing person/professional reference and tell him to ask his previous company for a reference anyway. Nine times out of ten they will give a satisfactory reference to avoid any complications. Slant your reference so that it is obvious you think highly of your friend in a business capacity.
You could just provide the reference saying that you recommended him for the job, and you can’t say enough good about him. Don’t bother to talk about why he was let go, even if they bring it up. It might seem weird if you try and make excuses for him. If they do bring it up (they probably won’t), indicate that you don’t know the circumstances of his departure from that company, but that you know him well enough that you can’t imagine any fault lay on him.
I decided on my answer before I read the “more inside”. Yes: if this is a throwaway type job, such as applying to be a waiter at a chain restaurant, where a faked reference doesn’t really matter a whole lot and is unlikely to be found out anyway. No: For all other cases, but especially if it would damage your own career if everybody found out about it. As soon as I saw this: We work in the same industry – biomedical research and development – I had my answer. Biomedical R&D must be a specialized field. If you could never work in that field again because your main employer and maybe your graduate adviser found out, it would kind of suck for you. Protect yourself and say no.
