u/PuzzleheadedCherry35

So a little background: a lady applied for a job on our office. She has a sister who works in HR and her brother in law is a former employee who still works in a similar line of work. Him and my current boss were friends and maintained friendship after he left.
She applied for a job in a different division, and they didn’t pick her. So my boss said she called her brother in law to see if she would be interested in a job in our division. That seemed like not a big deal but then she later revealed that she asked him about her as an employee (I guess she has done work for his business). She said the conversation lead to essentially a reference check.
My boss brought her in for a conversation and told me prior that she would be hiring her and this was really just a “formality”. The job wasn’t even posted online yet before she was offered it. I did look at our hiring procedures and it said that was ok. I’m just getting a weird feeling about the phone call it feels like pretty clear favoritism.

Tl;dr: my boss called the brother in law of a person that applied for a job in another division even though he was not listed as a reference check.