In response to this question on ERE: http://community.ere.net/blogs/joannegehas/2009/12/do-companies-own-candidates-who-post-their-resumes/. For the record, I am a Corporate Recruitment Manager
In the ERE Question: Do Companies “own” candidates, Johanne Gehas asks - is it right that a company she recruits for, as a third party (headhunter), claims ownership over any of her candidates they subsequently find on Monster.com?
A few people have attempted to answer this question: some have taken the position that it’s fair, since they are paying Joanne for candidates that aren’t on job boards; another response seems to indicate that anyone who has applied to that company’s ATS (applicant tracking system, usually the company.com/careers site), should not count.
I believe that any company who uses an Agency to search for prospects, should pay for any prospect who dosen’t apply to that precise open role, wthin reason. Let’s be frank, what Corporate Recruiters pay Agency Recruiters for, is speed, and depth of pentration into talent pools they are not tapping - due to lack of time, resources, or skill.
If XYZ company has a bunch of ineffectual recruiting minions — who have time to check these databases – they probably should be recruiting these prospects BEFORE an agency is engaged. In this situation, they are probably too unskilled, or suffering from poor leadership. Only a pretty dishonest person steals from those they partner with.
If ”Recruiters” are not converting prospects to job applicants (candidates) – they are not recruiting. Period.
I also take a semantic issue with this question. Prospects are not job candidates, candidates apply to specific positions. It’s the same problem with Social Media: someone is either a job candidate or not. I have Google alerts primed for the first Recruiting Department who wants to pretend ”ownership” over Social Media contacts. They are going to have a swell time explaning to a Jury why they didn’t discriminate against Johnny, smoking weed in his underwear. And mark my words, I will write about it in this blog.
There are privacy laws for a reason, same thing with the notion of a “job candidate”. Lot’s of pretty good reasons… not just for people who smoke weed in their underwear.
Let’s then tackle the ATS database aspect of this issue. Most companies have privacy statements about how long, and for what purpose they save your personal information for. Usually, the stated policy is 24 months. What then about those situations where databases are not flushed for 5-10 years, which is probably the norm in the recruiting world? Again poor leadership, and weak ethics, should the nature of the relationship, or boundry not be defined.
Folks, it comes down to this – if you want administrative minons to police a recruitment process, then good luck finding strong professionals (Agencies) who like to deal with honest partners.
