What We Ask Your Supervisor After You Leave the Site
The four questions a Leap allocator puts to your site supervisor once you have gone home, what each answer does to your record, and why 'yeah, he was alright I suppose' is a better result than it sounds.
Your reference is not a written report. It is a short phone call we make to your site supervisor once you have gone home, and it is the same four questions every time:
- "How did our guy go?" — deliberately open, and the most revealing
- "How many stars would you give him?"
- "Would you have him back?"
- "Anything that could be improved?"
What we are really hunting for: whether there was any conflict, problem or difficulty. If nothing comes up, that is a good result, not a blank one.
"Yeah, he was alright I suppose" is not faint praise. It means nothing went wrong, and that is most of the job.🪪 You finish the shift, sign out, get the train home, and that is the last you think about that site.
The site is not quite done with you. At some point your allocator picks up the phone, rings the supervisor you worked under, and asks him four questions about you.
His answers go on your record. They decide whether your phone rings next week.
Most workers never find out what we ask. So here it is, question by question, with what each answer actually does to your file.
What we ask your supervisor
1. "How did our guy go?"
Deliberately vague, and asked first on purpose.
An open question makes the supervisor volunteer whatever is actually on his mind. If something went wrong, this is where it comes out — unprompted, in his own words, before any scale or score narrows the conversation.
If nothing comes out here, that is already most of the answer, and your record stays clean.
The open question is the real one. Everything after it is just tidying up the detail.2. "How many stars would you give him?"
The number, and it does the least work of the four.
It matters most when the day was uneventful. If there were no problems, the rating is what separates a good worker from an ordinary one — the stars say how good you were, once we already know nothing went wrong.
It is not a scale you can climb by being impressive on one shift. It reflects an overall impression formed across a day of ordinary work.
3. "Would you have him back?"
The most decisive one for your next booking.
A yes here is worth more than a high rating, because it comes from the person who has to work with you again.
A site that wants you back is the strongest single thing on your file. It is what turns you from a name on a list into a request.
4. "Anything that could be improved?"
The one workers should want asked, even though it sounds like the risky one.
It surfaces small, fixable things — pace on a particular task, asking sooner, knowing where something lives. Those are useful and they are not black marks. They are the difference between being booked again and being booked again with a heads-up that makes the day go better.
Not every opinion counts the same
Something worth knowing, because it changes how much any single comment matters.
We weigh how much contact the supervisor actually had with you.
So a vague shrug from someone who barely saw you is not the disaster it might feel like. And a detailed positive from the bloke who worked next to you all week is worth a great deal.
What we are actually listening for
Underneath all four questions sits one: were there conflicts, problems or difficulties?
That is the point of ringing. Not to build a performance file — to find out whether anything happened that we need to know about before we send you somewhere else.
No news is good news, as the Aussies say. Most of your record is made of quiet days.If the answer is no, the booking goes ahead and the rating fills in the rest. If the answer is yes, we want the specifics rather than the label, because most "problems" turn out to be a misunderstanding about a task or a clash on a single morning.
A shrug from someone who barely saw you is not the disaster it feels like.
What actually gets valued
Worth being direct about this, because a lot of workers assume it is all about output.
Good nature and a pace you can hold all day. Not a sprint for an hour. A steady, sustainable pace is worth more to a site than a burst followed by a fade, and supervisors notice the difference immediately.
Brains and responsibility count as much as muscle. Understanding what the task is for, taking ownership of your own bit, thinking one step ahead, asking when you are unsure — those are what get someone asked for by name.
Give the supervisor an easy answer to all four. No conflicts. Steady pace. Took responsibility for his own work. Yes, we'd have him back. That is the whole formula, and none of it requires being the strongest bloke on the deck.
Two things you can do
Make sure the right person knows who you are. The call goes to the supervisor. If he cannot picture you, he cannot answer the four questions well. One conversation at the end of the day is enough.
Ask before you leave. "Anything you'd want done differently next time?" You get the fourth question's answer directly, and you get to act on it before it is ever said to anyone else.
🎯 Nobody is writing a character reference about you. Your supervisor is answering four questions on a short phone call — and every one of them is easier to answer well than most workers assume.
Want to be the name they ask for? Register and get on the board →
Related reads worth your time:
- 4 behaviours that get you re-booked every week in Sydney
- Career growth through labour hire: labourer to leading hand
- Taking feedback on site without blowing up
- Labourer jobs in Sydney: what is open now
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a labour hire agency ask a site about a worker?+
Four questions, in this order. How did our guy go, deliberately open. How many stars would you give him. Would you have him back. And is there anything that could be improved. The open one comes first on purpose, because what a supervisor volunteers unprompted matters more to your record than any score he picks.
Does a lukewarm review hurt a labour hire worker?+
No. "Yeah, he was alright I suppose" is a fine answer. It means nothing went wrong, which is most of what an allocator needs to know. The answers that actually change anything are the ones describing a conflict or a problem.
What is the most important thing a site tells an agency about a worker?+
Whether there were conflicts, problems or general difficulties. That is what the call is really for. As the Aussies say, no news is good news: if nothing comes up, the rating fills in the rest and the worker gets booked again without further discussion.
Does the supervisor's opinion always carry the same weight?+
No. The agency weighs how much contact the supervisor actually had with the worker. Someone who worked alongside him all week carries far more weight than someone who saw him twice across a large site.
What do labour hire agencies actually value in a worker?+
Good nature and a steady pace, alongside the obvious. Brains and responsibility count as much as muscle: someone who understands the task, takes ownership of it and is easy to have on a crew gets asked for by name.
How do you get asked for by name on a site?+
Give the supervisor an easy answer to all four of the questions we ask him. Work at a pace you can hold, avoid friction with the crew, take responsibility for your own task, and make sure the person who gets rung actually knows who you are.
