| I would gladly recommend a person who is already job hunting (with
that person's permission) to someone with a job to offer. I've
done it without payment in the past, but I would not hesitate to
accept a fee if it were offered.
I don't see the legal grounds by which a company could prevent one
from doing so. Even if they tried, how would they ever enforce the
policy? They'd have no way of knowing if you received payment from
a recruiter.
Claude
|
| A lot of our competitors give monetary rewards to employees who refer
people who end up getting hired. DEC has never officially done this,
although in some organizations the person who brought in the resume
gets treated to a dinner on the cost center, or similar (nothing like
the substantial sums some places give out, though). I never heard of a
HEADHUNTER offering referral money, but I suppose it could happen.
I don't like to discourage headhunters, since I might need one myself
someday, but most of those who call me wanting to know if I "know
someone" reel off such a long list of such general "qualifications"
that it is real obvious that the headhunter knows absolutely nothing
about the job. Do I know anyone who knows anything about one or more
of the following: computers, databases, workstations, Un*x, business
applications, fault-tolerance, scientific applications, governmenbt
applications, Cobol, Fortran, C, Pascal, ....
|
| re: referral money
Is it legal (or ethical) to tell a headhunter what someone else makes?
Or that a fellow employee's job is going away, so he'll take anything
that gets thrown to him? It might be a hard choice to make when a
recruiter dangles bounty money in front of you.
One way you can get into trouble here, whether there is money in it or
not, is to give a headhunter company- or personnel-confidential info.
It may be okay to say that a friend of yours is looking for a change,
but it would not be okay to say things like:
"Manager X is reorganizing, so some of his employees might be
interested in moving ...", or:
"The pay raise average is only 4%, so you might have some luck
talking to people if the price is right ..."
These are just examples, but there many are other possibilities.
Sometimes it is just people talking who don't realize what information
they are giving the headhunter. Headhunters have to run their business
by gathering intelligence any way they can, and are often not above
asking an unsuspecting employee about everything from org charts to
salary ranges.
Employee referral is one thing, but actively participating for profit
with a headhunter for anything but you're own career advancement (which
is an activity protected by law in most states) may walk the edge of
conflict-of-interest rules. DEC can compensate us for recruiting into
our own company, because it is in the company's interest. Can we say
the same of headhunter bounty money?
Geoff Unland
|