Ask HN: Recruiter Blackmail | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recruiter Blackmail

27 pointsmyth30 comments

I was working with a recruiter while looking for a new position. He pulled a bait and switch on me where he pitched one job to me and then scheduled a phone interview with another. After that, I told him I would no longer work with him.

After all of this, he pitched my resume to my current employer, I'm guessing to get me fired or tarnish my reputation. Do I have any legal recourse? What should my next actions be?

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Yikes, what a jerk.

Really, there's nothing immoral about speaking to recruiters when you're employed. It's within your rights to know what's out there, and what your current worth is.

That said, I'm not a lawyer, but if you lose your job over this (and I don't think a reasonable employer should fire you over it), it wouldn't hurt to speak with one. The recruiter would have a hard time explaining his motives for pitching you to your current employer, other than incompetence or maliciousness.

I'm not too worried about losing my job. I told my employer I was planning on leaving, then changed my mind. I'm part of the hiring committee for my current employer. So I was surprised when I saw my own resume sent out by my boss. I was able to piece together the timeline when my boss told me when the recruiter sent my resume to him.

His motives seem obviously to be malign, but what's the theory under which he's liable for damages?

Well, like if said I'm not a lawyer, but if the recruiter acted to malign and it resulted in termination, I feel like there may be something there. Certainly in that case it would be at least worth consulting someone.

If I say "tortious interference" is that adequately specific?

I guess. You'd have to demonstrate malice on the part of the recruiter, since simply sharing the fact that the client is looking for work probably isn't independently tortious. I guess I see it, now.

If the OP doesn't get fired, it might be tough for him (her?) to prove that he suffered any damages, a sine qua non of that kind of claim. [1]

[1] E.g., http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/intentional_interference_with...

The behavior described was either unethical or (more likely) incompetent, either way he sounds like a Bad Actor.

> What should my next actions be?

Send a cease & desist letter. If he's with an agency, address it the owner & principals. Given how important reputations are in the recruiting business, his boss should be informed.

Here's a good read, with ideas for scripting your letter> http://corcodilos.com/blog/317/let-the-resume-wars-begin

I even doubt incompetence. If he has my resume with my current job listed on it and pitches to that exact same job, it's purposeful and malicious.

The incompetence assumption-- lazy recruiters often bundle send resumes, based on keyword results sorted in their database. The profiles can look mind numbingly similar. It's easy to overlook individuals & company names if you're not paying attention.

The difference between incompetent and malicious is a sliding scale, not two discrete slots. If a recruiter isn't checking resumes properly before sending them out, he's already maliciously decided that quantity sent out is more important than doing quality work. I'd even say his decision to become a recruiter in the first place is malicious, the recruiting industry's very existence being based on hiding information, poaching workers from unfinished jobs, and legal trickery.

>vorg: That's a fascinating view of recruiting albeit myopic. A recruiters role is NOT to shanghai people or break up a happy home. Given the confidential and highly personal nature of the business, a certain degree of trust and transparency is always required.

If this guy works for a firm it would be worth notifying them. A good firm will want to protect it's brand.

I'd like to but they don't really have the right people to contact on their site. I also figured I should break off contact in the case that I speak with a lawyer. From what I've learned in the past, the next person to contact them should be a lawyer.

> they don't really have the right people to contact on their site.

In situations like that, I usually send it by certified mail, return receipt requested, with an address like this:

  XYZ Corporation
  ATTENTION:  LEGAL DEPARTMENT
  [street address, etc.]

The "Attention: Legal Department" part, plus the certified mail, will normally get the attention of the mailroom people, who presumably will route the letter to where it needs to go.

Pro tip: Get a certified-mail card from the post office before you put the letter in the envelope. Write or print out the certified-mail serial number (from the card) on the letter itself. Keep a photocopy of the letter, with the certified-mail number on it, in your files. That way, you'll have evidence that you sent that letter with that certified-mail card.

(Long ago at a motion hearing, an opposing counsel told a judge that he never got a certain letter from a colleague of mine, for whom I was filling in at the hearing. The opposing counsel said, "Your Honor, my secretary signed the card, but it must have been for some other communication, because I never got this letter." My colleague hadn't put the certified-mail number on the letter, so I had no proof otherwise; the judge gave the opposing counsel the benefit of the doubt. A couple of years after that, the opposing counsel was disbarred, for something unrelated.)

The latter has happened to me before, except I've never used a recruiter in my life. The recruiter had copied my LinkedIn profile into a Word document and had sent it to loads of companies, including my current employer.

Nothing really came from it. That company had a bad view of recruiters from the start, so they laughed it off as another incompetent recruiter.

In your case, you could try asking the recruiter why he did this. A response will let you know whether you are dealing with a malicious recruiter or a incompetent recruiter. Either way, reporting him to his boss would be the best course of action afterwards.

You could start by posting his full name here.

Don't do that, you'll prejudice a potential future lawsuit.

That and in addition also leaves OP open to a countersuit for libel. Then the emphasis is on the OP to prove that the recruiter did what OP claims they did and for the reasons OP claims (i.e. that it wasn't just utter incompetence).

I'm not saying the Op shouldn't sue. I'm saying the OP shouldn't post their name here.

out of curiosity, why?

The firm might settle if they don't want this published on the internet. In that case, they'd ask for a confidentiality agreement. If OP publishes their name, then he loses that leverage.

haha yes. of course the bastards would do this and then demand confidentiality. i guess it depends, then, on whether the OP would get greater satisfaction from publishing or from settling.

IANAL, but it really depends on what you want to achieve.

Posting his name on the internet is not going to give you anything. Given that you have no reliable proof it was an intent and not a mistake, it may cause all sorts of legal issues for you (like getting sued for libel, for example).

You may either let it go, or contact the company the recruiter works for (the way "dctoedt" described), stating that you (1) consider the recruiter's steps incompetent, unprofessional, and possibly done on purpose, and (2) the company is not going to do any more business with them (assuming the company decides that way).

Also, contacting the lawyer is not a bad idea (either let him check the letter or write it from scratch). If you have a legal department, they may take care of that.

Does your current employer know you want to leave?

How valuable are you to your employer? Is it possible to negotiate better terms (higher salary, better insurance, ...)? Some employers may go this route if they see a high-value employee in danger of being poached.

I told my employer I was planning on leaving, then changed my mind. Both my employer and I are happy with my work. I was seeing what else is out there. This definitely feels like malicious intent.

Let it go.

He's not going to last long in the recruiting business pulling stunts like that. Those guys get most of their candidates from personal referrals & their clients from people like your employer. Both of those bridges are burned.

I agree. Where I work, they keep a blacklist of companies/recruiters. They will never ever talk to those in the blacklist. This list was built over a period of time by people who worked at different places. So it is fairly long/comprehensive.

You say that it's a malicious intent. Are you sure about this? I remember a recruiter once pitched me for a role in a company I did an internship previously - this was when I was student and started to look for my first job. It's possible that he saw that you were an X with n years of experience and sent it to your current company since they were looking for the same profile.

You mention that your current employer knows that you are looking, and that you are not worried about losing your job. In that case I'd just discard him as a crappy headhunter and move on.

I told him at the end of last week that I didn't like the bait and switch he pulled on me and that I would not work with him again. I didn't take the call he set me up on. He said how he had to repair damage with the client he was courting with my resume.

He kept trying to pitch opportunities Monday to which I didn't respond.

He sent an email to my boss with my resume yesterday.

It's entirely too convenient to be stupidity.

EDIT: I just found out from my boss that there was no prior back and forth between the recruiter and him when the recruiter sent him my resume. My boss didn't respond to emails or calls. The recruiter just sent him my resume.

OK, that headhunter is a scum. But there is no damage from your side. I don't know if you can sue him or not, but if you can there's little to gain from it, so the best would be to just ignore him.

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