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Archives for May 2007

On Recruiting from a Competitor

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In response to my statement on prohibiting current employees from disclosing proprietary information from their former employers, blog reader Alberto from Sao Palo, Brazil, questioned me on the ethics of hiring from a competitor.

Competitors are the principal, sometimes inevitable, source for talent with industry-specific skills and relevant experiences. At first sight, the proposition of hiring from a competitor sounds quite rational: the recruit may be well-trained at the competitor; he/she may be able to jump-start a new venture and establish a customer-network readily. However, depending on the position your recruit held at the competitor, this attempt might be fraught with problems–ethical and legal.

In today’s competitive marketplace for talent, an employee has a fair right to seek employment with competitors of his/her current employer. However, the loss of a key employee and the fear that the former employee may reveal trade secrets to a new employer may lead to contention between the new and former employers. A recent example: the bitter dispute between Google and Microsoft when Google recruited a Microsoft executive to lead Google’s research initiatives in China.

Essential Considerations for Recruiting from a Competitor

Here are three important guidelines to consider when recruiting from a competitor.

  • Take into account the costs of hiring and retaining your new recruit. The recruit is likely to command a premium over his/her benefits with the former employer. Further, if your new recruit will leave a competitor to join your organization, he/she could leave your organization in the future and return to the former employer or transfer to a third organization. What will motivate him/her to continue to stay with your organization on the medium- and long-term?
  • During the recruiting process, understand any non-compete or non-disclosure agreements your recruit may have entered with the former employer. Abide by any such commitments—for the duration of the non-compete or non-disclosure agreements, if possible, assign responsibilities that do not conflict with terms of these contracts. Consult legal experts to weigh any potential risks.
  • If the recruit had held a key position in the competitor, he/she likely has access to proprietary information or trade secrets of your competitor. Do not solicit any proprietary information about the former employer—this is unethical and may expose you to liability.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Interviewing Candidates: Stale Questions Get Stale Answers
  2. How to Reliably Tell If Someone is Lying
  3. Embracing Cultural Sensitivity: A Case Study of Akira Kurosawa’s Oscar Speech
  4. Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees
  5. How to Hire People Who Are Smarter Than You Are

Inspirational Quotations #171

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It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.
—The Upanishads

In any family, measles are less contagious than bad habits.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Habit is a cable.—We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Habit with him was all the test of truth; “it must be right, I’ve done it from my youth.”
—George Crabbe

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Showing a profit means touching something and leaving it better than you found it.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Strength does not come from strength, but the denial of having strength.|Weakness does not come from weakness, but the denial of having weakness.
—Unknown

Inspirational Quotations #170

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Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
—Unknown

Look at frustration as a positive thing. It is the frustration that drives you to improve.
—John Lyons

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles, to be sure, but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.
—Robert Bolton (English Clergyman)

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.
—John Marshall (American Judge)

If you don’t set goals for yourself, you are doomed to work to achieve the goals of someone else.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Man does not live by a turkey in every oven or a color TV set in every home. Man lives by faith and hope and love, by the star on the horizon, by the trumpet that will not call retreat.
—E. Merrill Root (American Educator)

What is to give light must endure the burning.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

Don’t wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
—Charles Francis Richter

I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

Job Interviewing #2: Interviewing with a Competitor of your Current Employer

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Blog reader Ranganathan from Toronto, Canada asks, “I am interviewing with a competitor of my current employer. Most of my work at my current employer is confidential. How do I describe these projects in the upcoming interview?”

Ethics and Responsibilities

Interviewing with a Competitor of Current Employer: Ethics, Responsibilities Your employers, both current and former, expect you to treat sensitive and confidential information ethically. Accordingly, you must not disclose such information outside the company—in an interview, trade show or party at home.

During an interview with a competitor of your current or former employer, describe your past projects and accomplishments in terms of concepts and particulars that are public knowledge. If the interviewer presses for additional information, be diplomatic and decline to present confidential information. Interviewers will appreciate your reluctance.

Beware of a Trap: Test for Integrity

Interviewing with a Competitor of Current Employer: Test for Integrity Public trust and ethical behavior are vital to organizational and individual success. Recent corporate scandals have underscored the need for organizations to build and foster ethical business environments. Organizations are therefore inclined to select employees who share such moral values.

Good corporate ethics policies prohibit current employees from disclosing proprietary information from/about their former employers. In asking you for sensitive information, the interviewer is probably setting up a trap for you—the interviewer may be checking if you demonstrate a high degree of integrity and professional conduct.

Declining to provide proprietary information will demonstrate your consideration of the ethical consequences of your actions. Consequently, you will earn the respect of the interviewer.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Job-Hunting While Still Employed
  2. Before Jumping Ship, Consider This
  3. Use The STAR Technique to Ace Your Behavioral Interview
  4. Job Hunting: Don’t Chase Perfection
  5. What’s Behind Your Desire to Job-Hunt and Jump Ship?

Hamish McRae on Drivers of Change in the World Economy

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In an essay entitled “Reading the Future,” Hamish McRae, one of Europe’s leading futurists, argues that we can all understand the changes in the world today and get the future right. He identifies five important drivers of change in the world economy.

Hamish McRae on Drivers of Change in the World Economy

  1. Demography: how many more people there will be in the world, how old they will be, and where they will be located.
  2. Resources and the environment: whether there will be enough resources to give these additional people a decent lifestyle, the pressures this will create on the environment, and the impact on the business community.
  3. Globalization: how long it will continue to race onwards and how it will change its nature from emphasis on international trade to emphasis on movements of culture and talent.
  4. Technology: how we can see an outline of the technologies that will dominate for the next twenty-five years and how we must try to understand the broad social impact of these technological advances.
  5. Government and social change: why we will ask different things of government, why government will tend to retreat, and the opportunities that will be created for the private sector.

Call for Action

The five macroeconomic trends identified by Hamish present an opportunity to understand the future in a broad context. Translate these trends into microeconomic indicators and examine how they may affect your lives: your society, marketplace, industry and the economy. What opportunities do these trends present to your career, your personal and professional growth, your choice of investments, etc? How will you capitalize on these opportunities?

Example 1: In the United States, the oldest segment of the population—persons 65 years or older—is predicted to grow to 20% of the population by 2030 from about 12.4% in 2005. The aging population will increase the demand for healthcare services and preventive medicine. What investment choices can you make?

Example 2: Assume you dispense cash at a bank in a semi-urban location in India. In their relentless pursuit of productivity, banks in India will push new technologies: transactions over mobile phones and wider adaptation of ATMs and online recordkeeping, thereby shrinking the functions of bank tellers. There will be a greater demand for employees who understand customer needs, spot business opportunities and execute growth plans. How will you expand your skills and graduate into such roles?

Biography

Hamish McRae is one of Europe’s leading futurists and the principal economic commentator of ‘The Independent’ and ‘The Independent on Sunday,’ both published from the United Kingdom. He is the author of “The World in 2020: Power, Culture and Prosperity.” Hamish’s essay is part of the book “Leading Authorities in Business,” edited by Marshall Goldsmith and James Belasco. [Biography adapted from the website of the ‘Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.’]

Inspirational Quotations #169

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When you follow your bliss… doors will open
where you would not have thought there would be doors;
and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.
—Joseph Campbell

This above all—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Life is the soul’s nursery – its training place for the destinies of eternity.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (English Novelist)

If you do the best you can, you will find, nine times out of ten, that you have done as well as or better than anyone else.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

The whole world we travel with our thoughts, finding nowhere anyone as precious as one’s own self. Since each and every person is so precious to themselves let the self-respecting harm no other being.
—Samyutta Nikaya

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
—Dutch Proverb

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
—Tony Robbins (American Actor Author)

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
—Joseph Campbell

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
—Unknown

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.
—William C. Durant (American Entrepreneur)

Inspirational Quotations #168

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The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to ‘managers’ or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders—people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Dream what you dare to dream. Go where you want to go. Be what you want to be.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

A wise man hears one word and understands two.
—Yiddish Proverb

Inspirational Quotations #167

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People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.
—John Dos Passos

Fate leads those who are willing. The unwilling it drags.
—Viggo Mortensen

Like the elephant, we are unconscious of our own strength. When it comes to understanding the power we have to make a difference in our own lives, we might as well be asleep. If you want to make your dreams come true, wake up. Wake up to your own strength. Wake up to the role you play in your own destiny. Wake up to the power you have to choose what you think, do, and say.
—Keith Ellis

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
—Pablo Picasso (Spanish Painter)

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (American Journalist)

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
—Bill Taylor

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?
—Mary Manin Morrissey (American Christian Religious Leader)