Referrence Check Procedure

Hi All,
I am working in a small IT company. In our company i do the reference check by calling on the numbers provided by the candidate as professional and personal reference. I generally ask them to provide me with numbers of their last organisation's reporting manager. But i think this is not sufficient, since the person may give anyone's number as his reporting manager's number.
I also try to find out the contact number of the company's landline number via teh internet. But that does not help most of the time, as either numbers are not available in the internet or they are invalid.
Our company would not like to spend in reference check organisations at this point of time.
Please share the process of reference checks thats done in your org which can be more authentic than the above mentioned procedure.

Hi,
You can also look at asking for an email address of the reporting manager and ask him to validate the details of the employee on mail.
Some other details apart from the conduct that you can ask for would be
Designation
Period of employement
Department
Reporting manager
CTC
Exit/Settlement formalites completed
Conduct of the employee
Take care..

Hi,
Good tat u have taken a very good initiative of doing ref. checks on ur own...
Being a HR guy u should have ur own details of the other company HR guys..
So at the time of ref. checks u can use these contacts and ask the HR guy to provide the info of joining date and date of leaving of a particular vy giving his emp code/name(as per the previous employment)....At the time of ref. checking u may cal the ofice and ask for the respective HR number and u can proceed accordingly..
This would develop ur HR network and u will have accurate info in ref. check..
No superior will agree to give details of his resigned employee via e-mail even though the resigned employee may have a smooth exit...try and see...