Interesting. I look forward to hearing if this works out long term. I'd be worried about legal implications of something like this but IANAL.
While it can be difficult on the paperwork side, it's nothing short of amazing. It helped us find high quality fits for the team AND we actually had a better understanding of skill levels.
We also used it to educate ourselves on what each employee would need in their on boarding and personal development plans.
Probably not going to get that many low-level postgres specialists with deep experience walking through the door. If the consultant feels good about the project then they've got the chance to stick around in the long term.
The interview process was similar to any other company, but at the end we asked the candidate to do a short project (20 hours or less), which they would collaborate on with someone internally.
So only the best candidates made it to the project and hopefully at that point there were pretty sold on the company.
Did we lose some candidates? Sure, but we also didn't have any hires we regretted after changing to it.
This might be true for the employer, but for the employee, I think there could be serious issues. For example, my present employer would be very unhappy if I agreed to this and I have no idea how it would play out. I'm almost positive it is in violation of my present employment contract.
Did the candidate that went for it actually have full time employment? If so, did they get approval first?
Our time limit of 20 hours or less, also helps. The hours could be spread over many weeks if needed to ensure there wasn't a conflict.
That said, it's not unheard of that some employees have more strict contracts such as yourself and we certainly would have had to pass on those candidates or find another way to evaluate them.
We also had the luxury of being a fully distributed team (pre-covid), so collaboration could happen during the candidates off hours, with a team member that was working.
> It's unfathomable to me that corporations can have so much power over one's time outside of work.
I think this, and the general brain-drain from the broader industry, is really holding the tech sector back. So much OSS could be written if contracts weren't abusive in this way.
We've got automated switchboards, giant robots that make cars, giant robots that do our farming, massive plants for producing power. We even have enough housing already built in this country to house 6x the total number of homeless people. It's a false economy, and we know it because we're primarily a "service" economy.
So if most of our food is produced by robots, we have enough housing, and most of our jobs just exist to push health care paperwork around. Why are we not all on 20-30 hour work weeks?! I'm pretty sure most people would be fine doing 5-10 hours a week of essential nursing or working a field or whatever outside their "primary" job if you got 10-20 hours off the rest of the week.
Our system is freaking stupid.
But this actually may work for simple tasks, and a company in question doesn't looks like it is gonna throw simple tasks on their consultants.
Generally you're free to do whatever you wish with your free time outside working hours and the employment contract has no power over it.
Guessing it's not illegal to solicit someone under such a contract, but potentially a new hire could be ordered by a court to stop working at the new company, or a 3rd party could make claims that the outputs of their former employees are owned by said 3rd party.
IANAL
I would expect my company to be unhappy if I were to consult for a competitor on the side. There's probably language in the employment agreement that prohibits that, and even if there isn't, it's still the kind of thing you should avoid due to conflict of interest.
But I'm not sure about an agreement not to take a similar role. If the employment agreement says that, I'm not sure that it's legally binding. Even if it is, you may be able to weasel around it with "but it's consulting, not a full-time position".
Note well: IANAL. If you're concerned, get advice from a lawyer rather than from some rando on the internet.
Also, the demands listed in employment agreements are not always legally enforceable, or not legally enforceable in as broad of a way that they appear to be phrased.
For most US jurisdictions, intent is required on the part of the obstructing party, but in a minority of jurisdictions, negligence is enough.
I suspect this is why there's a clause in most employment agreements that I've signed, where the employee has to represent that they are free to enter into the agreement.
We can look at: Louis Rossmann soliciting firmware, tools, schematics, and parts from people. He's started that he feels he is, at best, in a legal grey area. At worst, he's paying people to exfiltrate intellectual property and trade secrets from Apple.
Moonlighting can look like industrial espionage if you squint really hard.