The reference you can't ask for

This essay first appeared in The Stir, our every-other-week newsletter, on September 2, 2026. You can join at simmer.social/stir.

The application has a field for references, and you know exactly whose name belongs in it. Not your current manager. She doesn't know you're looking. The person who saw your best work or the colleague who sat six feet away for three years and shipped the hard projects with you. They'd vouch for you in a heartbeat.

One problem. They'd be hearing from you for the first time in two jobs and two silent years.

That silence is the wall. Reaching out now, favor in hand, feels like it announces the very thing you feel worst about. So the best reference you have is the one you can't bring yourself to ask for.

This month's research says the wall is mostly in your head.

In 2011, three management researchers (Daniel Levin, Jorge Walter, and Keith Murnighan) published a study with a title we wish we'd written, "Dormant Ties: The Value of Reconnecting." They asked a group of EMBAs to do the exact thing you're dreading. Each one tracked down people they'd once been close to but hadn't spoken with in years, then asked them for advice on a live work problem. The researchers compared that advice with what the EMBAs current circles offered.

The quiet relationships held up and their advice was as good as advice from the people they talked with every week. Those conversations brought back perspective from outside, and demonstrated that trust had quietly survived the silence.

Dormant is not dead.

The participants were mid-career EMBAs. They were in a program that handed them a good excuse to reconnect. And it measured advice rather than job references, so it can't promise how any single conversation will go.

What it can do is correct the math you're running in your head. The respect you earned over three years did not expire when the occasions did. The relationship is still where you left it. Only the occasion is gone, and occasions can be made.

One thing to do this week. Reconnect before you need to ask, and reconnect like a person, not a campaign. Send your would-be reference two honest sentences with no favor in them:

Hey [name], I caught myself telling the story of that launch we pulled off and realized how long it has been. How are you, and what are you working on these days?

Let the first conversation just be a conversation. If the reference question comes up later, it will be a warm ask between people who are back in touch instead of a cold one out of nowhere.

And if you're settled while hiring season swirls around you, remember the other side of this study. Somewhere, someone is staring at your name, afraid to send that text. Make it easy. Answer warmly.