Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)

Is it OK to Hire People from Your Friend’s Company? (2011)
bhorowitz.com

Is that even legal? IANAL but it seems highly unlikely that only hiring someone if they agree to a reference check with someone they didn't list as a reference is kosher in most states. Typically the way this would work is that you could make a conditional offer, and anything beyond date of hire and date of departure (that caused them to not get the job) would be grounds to sue their previous employer... in which case you really aren't doing your friend any favors.

IMO in the scenario described you should just hire them and apologize to your friend.

Edit: and even if it is legal in your state its unethical as hell. If your friend says not to hire they are most likely going to be looking to replace them ASAP with someone who isn't looking to leave.

I understand that this particular case of Google-Apple happens to be considered illegal. However, I am not convinced that a law banning this practice will not make things worse for most people.

A cartel involves an arrangement where members REFUSE TO OFFER a better deal than the others - a pricefixing arrangement. On the other hand, this is very clearly about not going blatantly on each other's turf to solicit / poach. Consider this ... how did Apple find out about this? Was the employee called during work hours?

How come recruiters - internal HR or external agencies - can be instructed to not advertise job openings in venues like porn sites, but - it seems from all this outrage - cannot be instructed to not advertise on their competitors' websites? Why can't companies decide that the cost of reprisals for poaching key members is too high, independently and internally, before agreeing not to do it? To sum up - I do not see this as a cartel AS LONG AS neither company turns away candidates who applied on their own, based on a mutual agreement. To be fair, Google did have such a policy and to the extent that this policy existed, that WAS a cartel. But NOT if the agreement is limited to not advertising offers to each other's key employees. Those employees can easily find out job openings and average salaries just like everyone else can.

If you are going to make the argument that recruiters calling certain key employees of the other company to lure them away will give the majority of employees a better sense of how much they are worth and everyone's salary if going to go up, you'll have to work pretty hard to show the connection. Poaching key members of a team (e.g. to sabotage a competitor's project) seems to mostly benefit those key members. It increases the cost for everyone else including the companies involved. And that cost is very likely to be passed on to the other employees. You would also have to show that the companies will always choose not to pass on the cost of poaching to their employees -- because otherwise, you will have to admit that LESS poaching might actually lead to LARGER salaries. And in fact, the data seems to show this. (Once again, by poaching I mean reaching out and specifically cold calling key people in rival companies to advertise positions that they could have found on their own.)