Dirty tricks: headhunting (fwd)

Ombudsman account for AECOM (ombudsmn@aecom.yu.edu)
Mon, 31 Aug 1998 18:30:48 -0400 (EDT)

Ours is a small protein facility. Maybe this is the oldest scam in the
books on headhunting, but I relay it for a variety of reasons, not the
least of which is to alert others to it:

I answer the phone and he says (quickly) "Hi, I'm [I didn't catch it] from
the Department of [Neuro-something] and I talked with someone else there
about protein sequencing a couple weeks ago and I need to ask them another
question."
"Well, you could ask me." I say.
"No, isn't there someone else in your facility?", he persists
"Well, there's my technician Alice." (whose name isn't really Alice)
"Yes! Alice! What's her number, I must have mixed your number with the
lab's"

Now, this seemed pretty irregular since Alice usually refers users directly
to me whenever they contact her first, but I give him the lab number
anyway, thinking he's someone from the University (which has four
departments starting with "Neuro") that I'm just as happy not to continue
speaking with at the moment, and when he does finally reach Alice (who
anyway isn't in the lab just then) she'll send him back to me.
Later, I alerted Alice to who might be calling. Next day, she tells me he
called. "He didn't want sequencing, he wanted to offer me a job!" (Which
she declined interest in.)

Not supposing that there's anything illegal about this, and I'm more
bemused than irritated, but had Alice decided to jump I'd be pretty enraged.