Lesson 2 (from the Magic In the Method phone sourcing training series presented by Maureen Sharib)Names Sourcing and Free Enterprise(Is it legal?)

The long form is here:

The short form follows.

Names sourcing has been called “social engineering.” The definition of social engineering is, according to Webster’s,

“management of human beings in accordance with their place and function in society—applied social science.”

Some people wonder about the ethics of that.

I don’t. In general, if you’re not acting purposely and maliciously to destroy a

competitor, you are free to source into your competitors for good employees.

I feel strongly that our industry practices fall on the side of free enterprise.

I know corporations have some grievances against our practice of luring their employees away from them.

Losing key employees to competitors can harm corporations.

But not losing employees to competitors can harm them as well.

There’s federal precedence now for telephone sourcing. In September of 2010 the Department of Justice entered into a settlement

and agreement with six companies - Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar - that going forward the companies would no longer enter into agreements between each other not to “poach” from one another.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/September/10-at-1076.html

Those companies had to be told, with a legal settlement, that not taking employees (directly soliciting) from each other was wrong.

And there’s more. In a statement, Google said:

“In order to maintain a good working relationship with these companies, in 2005 we decided not to “cold call” employees at a few of our partner companies. Our policy only impacted cold calling, and we continued to recruit from these companies through LinkedIn, job fairs, employee referrals, or when candidates approached Google directly.”

Can you believe it?

In other words, Internet recruiting was A-OK but they drew the line at calling another company’s employees on the phone.

Here’s what the Department of Justice felt on the matter:

“…the agreements eliminated a significant form of competition to attract highly skilled employees, and overall diminished competition to the detriment of affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities.”

Wow! If there hasn’t been a better reason to know how to phone source I haven’t

seen it!

It used to be (before the DOJ ruling) hard to find any guidelines for hiring a competitor’s employees.

Basically, the following has always been and still is my brief interpretation on the subject - it just seems like common sense to me. I am not an attorney, nor do I have any aspirations (or hope ever) to be one. It’s an admirable profession, far beyond my capabilities.

A very good guiding principle for hiring a competitor’s employees should be:

“Any employee is not entitled to use or disclose the former employer's trade secrets, and the new employer is not entitled to use the employee as a conduit to gain the benefit of the former employer's secrets.”

In other words: DO NOT hire a competitor’s employees if your intention is to put the

competitor out of business.

DO hire a competitor’s employees if your intention is to gain good employees.

Restrictive Covenants Be aware of them. Be also aware that they may be fair or unfair. See your

state laws for applicability. A little learning on this subject can be dangerous! Trade secrets need to be protected regardless of what law applies.

“Nothing sanitizes like sunlight.”

In the MagicMethod series , we feel it’s important to get the subject of Telephone Names Sourcing out into the open. Still, even now in 2012, very few people know about it. If they did, more would use us!

But they're not going to use us until they know about us and safely understand the subject.

For more information on the MagicMethod telephone names sourcing curriculum go here: http://www.techtrak.com/training.html