Friday, February 20, 2009

Resume Pirating on the Rise!

Let me ask you a question. Is it a good thing for someone to call you and say “hey I got you an interview at XYZ Company?” Well that would depend on whether or not you know that person and gave them the OK to send your resume. I have heard more complaints of job candidates resumes being downloaded from popular sites such as Monster and Careerbuilders and being sent to companies unbeknownst to them more than ever. It has always been an issue but not to this degree. Desperate times seem to bring out the “Machiavellian” in some, while others focus on what is the right thing to do.

The other day Facebook changed their “Bill of Rights” that made their users furious. Facebook wanted and I quote “an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" to "use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute" of your information forever. Well you can all read up on the story but needless to say they went back to their old “Bill of Rights”. People were furious, spoke up, wrote about it and they have decided to go back to their original policy mentioning that they would revisit this in the future.

People, you need to protect your information. That is why you need to know where your information is being sent. When working with a recruiter they absolutely should tell you (every time) before sending your resume to a potential client and not a blanket statement during your meeting with them. Be very afraid of the phone call from a recruiter that you haven’t given any authority to that you have an interview. This practice is used by some recruiting firms who been around forever!

They tell you that they have been the President of CAPS and that they’ve been recruiting forever! Don’t fall victim to a few of these unethical recruiting agencies out there that prey on you the “job candidate” and take advantage of your situation. If this does happen to you, get all the information that you can by the recruiter. Call the client who you are meeting with and contact them to explain the situation upfront and don’t fear that they won’t hire you. Everyone sourcing resumes to clients know that unsolicited resumes are not warranted.

Read through some of our earlier blogs and you will find that we are upfront with job candidates by explaining the rules of conduct.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I hate the calls from the alledged "recruiter" that wants to represent you to a potential employer for a fee that is thousands of dollars. I was actually dumb enough years ago to think they had something to offer. I got a crappy resume and a fax broadcast followed by a lot of angry connections from people wanting off the distribution list. In retrospect, you can get all they offered for a few hundred dollars at many locations online. Don't trust ANY of the firms that say they represent C-level execs in their pursuit of a new opportunity.