On the topic of the first one, am I the only one who finds it strange that a recruiter could 'poach' one of your references? I mean, maybe I'm unusual or it works differently over here, but from what I hear, most people's references in the UK seem to be managers or business owners for the companies they worked with, not the normal employees.
Do people usually give their 'normal' colleagues as references in the US?
If you've been working at a large company for several years, there may be very few people outside your company who know your work well enough to give a meaningful reference. Then, you can't give a manager's name, since they will almost certainly tell your own manager what is going on. That leaves only your co-workers.
Oh, you're talking about someone applying for a job and using a reference from their current company. I always thought people used references from companies they don't work at anymore.
Or your references might be a manager from your previous position plus a co-worker from a previous position plus a manager from the position before that. The co-worker from the previous position might end up being recruited.
That said, if my reference applied for the same position as me and got it, whatever, more power to them, and I probably wasn't going to get it anyway. There are enough jobs out there for both of us, and I'd rather at least know that one went to someone I like.
In that case they should definitely avoid giving references until the last possible step. For those that do have other options though, I still think going with a manager/non colleague at a company you're not associated with anymore is the safer bet for these sorts of things, since recruiters won't have anyone to poach and your current boss won't know you're looking.
(Solution 2 would be to have as many different references as possible and to give different ones for different applications, so that no one gets too annoyed by all the calls/emails).
Do people usually give their 'normal' colleagues as references in the US?