By ELIZABETH GARONE

Q: I’ve worked several jobs since separating from the Army. Some have been contracting positions, others as an exempt employee. Some have been with high-profile international companies. Not once have any of my previous employers or references been contacted. Do references really matter anymore? It seems to me they are even less important than cover letters and the objective statement in resumes.

A: You would be mistaken to think that references hold little weight, especially in the current depressed job market. “References absolutely matter,” says Paul W. Barada, president of Barada Associates Inc. The Rushville, Ind.,-based firm provides pre-employment screening services for large employers such as Emmis Communications Corp. and Acorda Therapeutics Inc.

Some people who are out of work embellish their past job performance, credentials and academic achievements to gain an edge over the competition, Mr. Barada says.

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With applicant pools growing larger by the day, it would be good to assume that employers will be diligently contacting references. “In my experience, references are always being checked,” says Dena Sneider, a career consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area. “In this market, they will certainly be checked since employers have their pick of candidates.”

Remember, too, that just because you haven’t heard anything from a reference doesn’t mean that he or she hasn’t been contacted.

More than ever, it’s essential to choose those references who can best speak to your work abilities and past successes on the job. A problem that Mr. Barada frequently sees is job seekers who list references with whom they’ve never actually worked. “What, for instance, can your golfing buddy know about your management style or job responsibilities?”

It’s important to consider who would be an employer’s ideal set of references. Usually, this is a current or former supervisor, peer and subordinate whom you’ve worked with in the past five to seven years, according to Mr. Barada.

Another mistake job seekers often make is not checking in with their references each time they list them on an application. You don’t want a reference to be caught off guard when he or she receives that all-important call. If you are planning on listing someone, send an email thanking him or her for agreeing to serve as a reference and include a copy of the job description. It couldn’t hurt to refresh a reference’s memory by including a list of your responsibilities and achievements from when you worked together. By providing the necessary information, your references will be much more prepared to take a call and to impress a potential employer.

For Bob Daugherty, who heads U.S. recruiting for PricewaterhouseCoopers, the best references are ones from people who work for the organization you’re looking to join. “Resumes and letters are expected to be strong, and candidates should still have several strong references at the ready, but it is those networking relationships that truly matter the most in getting in the door.”

Mr. Daugherty offers hard evidence that relationships matter more than you might think. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, more than 40% of hires with experience (as opposed to those recruited directly from campus) come through employee referrals, he says. If you don’t already have connections at a firm you’re targeting, seek out references from people in your network.

Write to Elizabeth Garone at cjeditor@dowjones.com. If you have a question for the careers columnists, be sure to put Career Q&A in your subject line.

Por JEFF FICK

A Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. nomeou Maria das Graças Silva Foster para assumir a presidência executiva e substituir José Sergio Gabrielli, que deve entrar na política.

O ministro da Fazenda, Guido Mantega, foi quem indicou Foster. O conselho de administração da Petrobras deve aprovar a indicação em sua próxima reunião, em 9 de fevereiro, informou a petrolífera estatal num comunicado. O governo controla o capital votante da Petrobras e se espera que a indicação seja aprovada sem resistência.

Foster é diretora de gás natural e energia desde 2007 e deve manter a estratégia do governo de desenvolver as gigantescas reservas descobertas na costa do Sudeste nos últimos anos. A Petrobras vai gastar pelo menos US$ 224 bilhões nos próximos anos para produzir bilhões de barris de petróleo e tarefa principal de Foster será enfrentar os desafios criados por uma expansão rápida e vasta como essa.

Foster, engenheira química respeitada na indústria petrolífera, era amplamente considerada a sucessora de Gabrielli, em parte devido à ligação antiga dela com a presidente Dilma Rousseff.

As duas se conheceram em 1999, quando Rousseff era secretária de Energia do Rio Grande Sul e Foster administrava a construção de um gasoduto da Bolívia, segundo a revista “Exame”. Quando Rousseff se tornou ministra das Minas e Energia, em 2003, ela indicou Foster para um cargo importante no ministério.

“A Graça é de absoluta confiança da presidenta Dilma”, escreveu no Twitter o senador Delcídio Amaral (PT/MS), que já foi executivo da Petrobras. “Quem a conhece, sabe que fará uma competente gestão!”

Gabrielli é diretor-presidente da Petrobras desde 2005, mas surgiram várias notícias recentemente afirmando que ele quer se candidatar, provavelmente a governador do Estado da Bahia, onde nasceu. Jacques Wagner, o governador atual, não pode se candidatar para um terceiro mandato.

Um porta-voz do governador não retornou uma mensagem pedindo um comentário sobre o assunto na manhã de segunda-feira. Wagner disse em entrevista a uma rádio de Salvador na segunda-feira que convidou Gabrielli a ocupar uma secretaria em seu gabinete. A ação da Petrobras subia 0,1% na BMF&Bovespa.

A maioria dos analistas concorda que a mudança provavelmente terá um efeito neutro ou até positivo na Petrobras. “Não enxergamos a mudança no comando como algo traumático para os investidores”, disse um analista num relatório para clientes. Foster tem administrado “bem” a sua divisão e não deve recorrer a aumentos de capital para financiar os gigantescos planos de investimentos da Petrobras. “Estamos cautelosamente otimistas”, disse o analista.

By SHIRLEY S. WANG

LOS ANGELES—What does every aspiring dragon mother want? A dragon baby.

Monday begins the year of the dragon, considered the luckiest of the Chinese lunar years. Some Chinese and Chinese-Americans are so committed to welcoming a child this year that they are getting fertility treatments to boost their chances.

WSJ’s Shirley Wang reports on Chinese families hoping to capitalize on the luck associated with the Year of the Dragon as they try to have children. AP Photo.

Evie Jeang, a 34-year-old Los Angeles lawyer, and her husband, Vincent Chen, 40, are one such couple. Ms. Jeang doesn’t have known fertility issues but froze her eggs two years ago as “insurance” since she wasn’t ready to have a child yet. The couple is now trying in-vitro fertilization to try to ensure they have a dragon baby.

If she isn’t pregnant by March—or maybe April, says Ms. Jeang—then “it isn’t meant to be.” They will stop treatment and try again in a few years.

Assisted-reproduction clinics in the U.S., China and elsewhere are reporting a surge in demand tied to the year of the dragon. The Los Angeles-based Agency for Surrogacy Solutions and sister company Global IVF Inc. have seen a 250% increase in business from Chinese or Chinese-Americans so far in January, according to co-founders Kathryn Kaycoff-Manos and Lauri Berger de Brito.

They expect the trend to continue until mid-May, the time by which couples need to conceive in order to deliver a baby by Feb. 9, 2013. Any baby born after that will be a snake not a dragon.

Being aligned with cosmic forces is important in Chinese culture. The year of the dragon is supposed to be particularly fortunate for babies, marriages and businesses. Those born as dragons are “the strongest, smartest and the luckiest—supposedly,” says Yibing Huang, a professor of Chinese literature and culture at Connecticut College. Mr. Huang has a dragon brother, though he himself is a sheep, a “mediator,” he says.

Chinese often schedule important life events to take advantage of the luckiest times. A recent lunar year that spanned two springs spurred a spike in weddings. And even though births are trickier to plan, in 2000, the most recent year of the dragon, 202,000 more babies were born in Taiwan than a year earlier, according to the Taipei Times citing government statistics.

Now with improvements in fertility treatments—and more affluent families in China—couples are deciding not to leave their luck to chance. Some are traveling long distances to the U.S., where reproductive medicine is thought to be more successful though more expensive. One cycle of in-vitro fertilization, a procedure in which a woman’s eggs are harvested, fertilized and placed back in her womb, costs upward of $10,000 in the U.S. compared to about $2,400 in China, according to the website IVFcost.net.

K. and G. Lam, a couple who live on the southern coast of China and both work in finance, have been trying to conceive naturally and through in-vitro fertilization for years in China without success. With the coming year of the dragon, they decided to “accelerate” their efforts to have a dragon boy by using a surrogate in the U.S., says Mr. Lam, 40. Surrogate mothers are illegal in China, as is picking the gender of the child.

As the Lams prepared to meet their surrogate at a clinic in Los Angeles one recent day, Ms. Lam was sober. “I’m putting my dreams in [her] hands,” says Ms. Lam, 39.

During their first meeting with the woman, Shereen, Ms. Lam was so moved she cried. Shereen seemed kind, and though she isn’t Chinese, the Lams say that doesn’t matter. Any baby born during the year is a dragon baby, no matter where or to whom—and the child will be biologically theirs.

A lucky zodiac means “more hope for [the baby's] success,” says Mr. Lam.

Robyn Perchik, owner of Beverly Hills Egg Donation in California, said a doctor told her about the coming year of the dragon, so she increased the clinic’s database of donors of Chinese origin by targeting Chinese-language newspapers. The group has seen a 250% surge in contracts signed for those eggs in the past few months compared with a year earlier, says Ms. Perchik.

There has been an increase at some clinics in Asia as well. Chen Hsin-Fu, president of the Taiwanese Society for Reproductive Medicine in Taipei and a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital, known for its expertise in fertility treatment, said the hospital has seen a 30% to 50% increase since May from patients all over Asia.

Many couples undergoing fertility treatment don’t have a medical need for doing so. Ms. Berger de Brito says that 30% or so of Global IVF’s current Chinese clients have no medical necessity, a percentage echoed by Lin Tseng-kai, head of the Artificial Reproductive Technology Center at Hsinchu Cathay General Hospital in Hsinchu, Taiwan. “It doesn’t matter if you have an easy time or a hard time [getting pregnant], when it comes the dragon year they all want to have one,” says Dr. Lin.

Ms. Jeang, the Los Angeles lawyer, grew up in Taiwan until the sixth grade surrounded by family who believed intensely in astrology and went to psychics. She had a two-year engagement before getting married because her mother told her that it would be more auspicious if the wedding took place after she turned 30.

Being born a dragon should be good for the baby but also for her husband, she says. She has been told that a baby born the following year, which would be a snake, wouldn’t get along well with him. In fact, taking her husband’s pig sign into account, if she doesn’t have a baby this year, she should wait five more years before giving birth. The couple hasn’t decided if they would wait that long, as Ms. Jeang would be 40 by then.

Her Asian-American husband “thinks I’m crazy, but he just wants to have kids,” she says.