It’s a Cruel World

Top performers in many fields are becoming increasingly hard to find. As such, recruiting is becoming more and more competitive. Sadly, at times, it can be quite cut-throat. In any difficult situation, there will always be those willing to throw away their principles, or mock yours, if it allows them to gain an advantage. There are all kinds of ways to rationalize it, but even in war there are rules. It’s no good saying “Capitalism made me do it.” In the end, people have to live with their own consciences. More significantly for some, they also have to live with the real-world consequences of their actions. Consider downloading and implementing HRd's Recruitment and Selection Policy and Recruitment Plan so that guidelines for ethical recruitment are firmly established within your organization.

Actions Bring Reactions

Before they decide to start landing low blows, companies should realize that their actions will have repercussions. Every industry, no matter how large it may seem, has its own community. People know each other, and people talk. A company that makes a habit of stealing other companies’ top performers will soon become a pariah within its own industry.

As a company’s reputation deteriorates, it will find it increasingly difficult to find and retain quality people. It will then find itself in a vicious cycle, having to resort to increasingly unethical and expensive means to fill vacancies. These companies would do well to remember that when skills are scarce, skilled people can choose where they want to work, and nobody wants to work for a company that everybody hates.

There May Be Legal Consequences

There are those for whom earning the ire of their industry is still not a deterrent. Those companies would do well to consider the growing threat of legal action against poachers. There has been a trend, particularly in the U.S. towards ever more complex employee contracts containing language aimed at protecting intellectual property and proprietary information, as well as instituting non-competitive agreements.

Breach of contract lawsuits, or the threat of them, are used to deter employees from moving capriciously to other employers. Some legal experts are speculating that recruiters and the companies that hire them may be increasingly drawn into those lawsuits as parties to the damages, if they can be shown to have induced the breach of contract.

Outsourcing Requires Caution

There are circumstances when using an outside recruiter to fill a vacancy makes sense, particularly in highly specialized fields. It pays to choose your recruiter carefully, however. Most recruiters are reputable, but the presence of the unethical few makes it important to select your recruiter wisely and make sure you know how he or she is going to go about finding you your perfect candidate.

Look for someone with a clearly stated code of ethics and standards of behavior. Don’t stop there, though. Carefully research their background and reputation. Ask for references. Make sure they practise what they preach. A code of ethics is easy to type up and put on a website or print on fancy paper. If they don’t live by that code, though, it’s nothing but empty words. For more tips on outsourcing recruitment, please read our February 2011 article entitled: "Drowning in a Sea of Resumes? Save Time and Outsource Recruitment!" Or consider downloading our Recruiter Evaluation Tool or our Management Evaluation of Recruitment Services Survey.

Beware of What You’re Getting

Using a headhunter to lure talent away from another company may seem like a tempting way to add a quality person, but the equation is not as simple as it seems. Just in the way they come to their new company, the headhunter’s prize has a tarnished record of loyalty. Past behavior is the usually best indicator of future behavior, so what are the odds that person is going to become a useful long-term employee?

Some unethical recruiters will go back to people they’ve poached before. While more than a little sleazy, their reasoning is sound. If a person can be enticed to jump ship once, chances are they’ll do it again. Some recruiters find a goldmine in fees in the company-hopping habits of a handful of individuals fortunate enough to have skills that are in demand.

Also be aware that the recruited person may also not be exactly as described. If a recruiter will lie to gain access to his target and then to land them, it’s a fair assumption he’ll also lie to the company that hired him. Resumes are inflated at the best of times. Add another layer of duplicity and there’s a high potential for misrepresentation.

Build an Ethical Success

It can be difficult to be the only one playing fair when everyone around you is fighting dirty, but it is possible to be an assertive and innovative recruiter without behaving badly. You don’t have to lie to anybody. You don’t have to infiltrate an organization under false pretenses. You don’t have to make promises you can’t keep.

Good recruiters don’t need to use unethical practices. They have learned to innovate and make use of the plethora of modern resources available to them. Modern technology has produced an unprecedented access to information and networking opportunities. LinkedIn, Facebook, and other online services can help you find potential candidates without doing anything deceitful. For more information, refer to HRd's article entitled: Alternative Recruitment: Finding the Hidden Talent.

Headhunters Are Hard to Keep Out

There are recruiters out there who will lie to your reception or switchboard staff to gain access to their targets. With the abundance of information now available on the internet, they may have one specific target in mind and they may have a pretty specific strategy for going after that person. This is the hardest circumstance to prevent.

Other times, they may be cold-calling multiple members of your staff. Often, they obtain telephone or email lists through a variety of illegitimate means. Repeated calls from the same source, with vague details of the topic of discussion, are a giveaway that reception staff can watch for. It’s impractical to treat every caller with suspicion, though, and it can be difficult to detect the intentions of somebody who has no qualms about being dishonest.