Re: Dirty tricks: headhunting (fwd)
Ombudsman account for AECOM (ombudsmn@aecom.yu.edu)
Thu, 3 Sep 1998 09:35:45 -0400 (EDT)
I must add a positive note about headhunters and a story of how one=20
got burned by my company (thus my decision to seek anonymity through=
=20
use of the ombudsman account).
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I've had many, many calls from headhunters. They've always seemed=20
professional but, in general, neither they nor I got much out of the=
=20
calls. I regarded them as a mild nuisance. At least once, I lost an=20
assistant to a headhunter who must have used subterfuge similar to=20
that in question. Nonetheless, I still have a slight bit of sympathy=
=20
for them because, as Ioannis Papayannopoulos implied, they are a=20
necessary evil.
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About seven years ago, one headhunter earned much more than a slight=
=20
amount of my sympathy because she/he introduced me on a Monday=20
afternoon to a well qualified candidate who had been the victim of a=
=20
massive reduction-in-force (RIF) at a company down the street. I=20
interviewed the candidate on Tuesday morning, called some references=
=20
and, by Tuesday afternoon, decided to make an offer. Our HR departme=
nt=20
would not allow me to extend the offer and, later in the week, made =
an=20
agreement with the other company to try to place their RIFfed=20
personnel. As a consequence, our company denied the headhunter a=20
rightfully earned, multithousand dollar fee.
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I offered to assist the headhunter in a lawsuit against my company,=20
but she/he would not sue, claiming that a continued working=20
relationship with our HR department would be better. (I think that=20
decision didn't pay off.) A great irony in this situation is that th=
e=20
job in question had been open for about two months, a period during=20
which HR never located an individual even remotely qualified. They=20
sent many poorly screened r=E9sum=E9s, however, so that they could c=
laim=20
to be useful. Come to think of it, that has been the pattern of our =
HR=20
department (and their predecessor, the Personnel Department) over th=
e=20
past 15 years. So you can see, Ioannis, even large companies such as=
=20
mine "often do not have adequately staffed HR departments to do the=20
job properly."
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Incidentally, the new assistant was eventually hired, is still here=20
and is highly regarded; my assistant who was lured away, also highly=
=20
regarded, came back after six months and is still with me.