Employers Trolling for Current Employee Resumes?

powderhound asks: "Recently, my employer started looking for new employees and started to find the resumes of current employees on the job Web sites. I've heard that management was not pleased. In the old days, before Web job sites, you could job hunt with relative certainty that your current employer would not find out until you gave notice. Now, any employer wishing to check on their employee's desire to find a new job need only sign up on the job Web sites and start trolling. How do we, as employees looking to change jobs, protect ourselves from possible discovery, and even worse, retribution? What have you done to protect yourself? Do you think employers are trolling job sites for their own employees?"

Comments

The Real Problem

[Medgur]

The real problem is that your employers didn't recognise their employee's discontent and ambition. Rather than opening a discussion to improve the quality of their employment they chose to become displeased. It's no wonder they're experiencing employee retention issues, they have an aggressive and hostile methodology in dealing with their employees.

Move on, move on.

Re:The Real Problem

[ivan256]

The real problem is actually that his management probably didn't consider that the people may just have their resumes out there to see what's going on... Testing the waters. It doesn't have to mean that they actually are actively seeking to leave. They got upset because they expect loyalty, so innocent explanations escaped them. It really would be best if managers realized that they were in a business relationship with their employees, and nothing more. Just keep that relationship mutually beneficial and you don't have to worry about your employees leaving.

Re:The Real Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I dated an HR director for a few years and it gave me a huge insight into what HR does in the modern corporation. HR's job is to basically protect the corporation from any employee liability. This typically means they file away every little thing they think might be useful if they ever need cause for termination, to contest your claims to unemployment, to contest any claims for workman's comp -- basically to cover their ass. You would be amazed at what is in your HR file. ;) Anything after that is just extra.

Now I'm not saying its like that EVERYwhere, but in most large corporations, and many small ones, HR is not your friend. This is really sad because years ago it was just the opposite. EA obviously has a poor HR department. ;)

Re:The Real Problem

[umbrellasd]

It really would be best if managers realized that they were in a business relationship with their employees, and nothing more. Just keep that relationship mutually beneficial and you don't have to worry about your employees leaving.

I see things somewhat differently. What I see in the industry is a definite trend toward companies caring much less about their employees. Employees are "resources" to be "utilized" in a "cost-effective" manner. The hypocrisy is that when an employee does the natural thing and protects themself by treating their employer in a similar fashion, employers get angry.

What they really want is the most cost-effective relationship possible. And that just may be slavery. There are laws against outright slavery, but "economic" slavery is not outlawed by any means. Most world economies thrive and require it.

So spend, spend, spend little consumerbots!

Re:The Real Problem

[RomulusNR]

It really would be best if managers realized that they were in a business relationship with their employees, and nothing more.

Despite how impersonal and dysfunctional that would be, I would actually tolerate that amicably. The problem, of course, is that it tends to tip the hand in favor of the employee at inconvenient times, which employers don't want. Workers are expected to be infinitely local to their employers, while employers simply don't return that loyalty.

The tendency is not towards an equitable or balanced employer-employee relationship, which the phrase "business relationship" would tend to suggest. The tendency is towards top-down control and imbalance of that relationship. YMMV, and your company might not have gotten there -- yet, or maybe luckily never. But very few companies go from an anti-employee environment to an equitable one without some sort of revoltive event (unionizing, buyout, etc.)

I agree -- far, far too many companies have no interest or concern regarding employee morale. They either appeal to a very unconvincing "good of the company" mentality, or use fear of termination -- or sometimes neither, using absolutely nothing to encourage workers -- to maintain or aggravate the demoralized status quo.

Of course, what doesn't help is that employers and employees both know (or think) that employers can always get more obedient, cheaper labor, fairly easily; and both also know (or think) that generally, employees cannot get more accomodating, more lucrative employment without risk.

So the employer-employee relationship is simply not an amicable, equitable business relationship, but something much more silently adversarial, where employers fight for the cheapest, most productive labor, and employees struggle for the best benefits and pay.

Say what you will -- organization of labor is probably the only thing that can actually make that relationship at all like a business relationship.

no name?

[MikeFM]

Don't include your real name?

According to an Employment Advocate I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...If you are thinking of "moving on", do not ask your current employer to match any offer made by anybody else: the reasoning being that even though they may consider you worth paying a little more to keep right now, they'll also consider you disloyal and a potential future problem. It's a fast track to being marginalised and finding your name at the top of the down-sizing list. Either take the new job, or silently stick with your existing postion.

Mindset

[miyako]

I should preface this comment with the fact that I'm only 22, and barely in the "real world" myself- so remember that although I may have no idea of what I'm talking about from experience, I think what I'm going to infer does make sense- and perhaps someone who has seen more of the world can validate or invalidate my ideas. That said, here goes:
Before the advent of sites such as Monster.com, etc. job hunting was a fairly active pursuit. It involved looking at potentially interested companies- sending in your resume to them, etc. Now days, job "hunting" can be much more benign. The fact is that it's quite reasonable to be perfectly content with ones job, and not actively seeking a new employer, but still to have your resume online 'incase something better comes along'. In fact, I would be that many of the people who's resumes were posted on Monster.com had posted them there before they got their current position.
It seems that the optimal solution is really to just get Managers/HR drones to realize this and to not associate running across someones resume online with the idea that they are actively searching for new employment.
If HR still doesn't like it (especially if where you work is an 'At Will' employment place), then I would politely inform them that- if they are worried about you leaving then they should consider negotiating a contract for your exclusive employement, and if you are able to find mutually acceptable terms, then you will remove your resume.

Use privacy options

[ghee22]

Careerbuilder, Dice.com, Monster.com all have privacy options. One I use goes is similar to this: "keep my resume searchable but hide my name, phone number, email address, and my current employer's name"

So how do future employers contact you? They use the contact job seeker option on the website, such as Dice.com, and Dice would then forward the email to you. It is then up to you unveil your identity when replying back to the employer.

What you can do to further your privacy is use a new email address that doesn't have your name in it to inquire more about the job opportunity.

Good luck!

Trolling?

[cammoblammo]

Umm, isn't the word 'trawling?'

Then again, I'd love to mod my employer down...

Semi-relevent story

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Well, it's not entirely related to this story, but I figured I'd share a little experience I had. In Feb of 2004, I was laid off. I was in the middle of creating some artwork that I was posting on a web-forum for others to watch the progress on. So, the goal of that piece became to make it ready to throw on my demo reel so I could seek work. I even named a couple of places I was gunning for. Unfortunately, it didn't look as though I was going to finish that piece as soon as I would have like, so I left the thread there and moved on to other stuff.

One year and 3 days later, happily employed, I found a little time one night to resume that piece. Once satisified, I posted the image. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to set my alarm that night. I overslept the next day. When I finally arrived at work, my boss was real happy to see me. You see, this forum I was posting artwork to was the exact same forum that he discovered me with. He read these February posts about gunning for a job at these two other places and became concerned. That, coupled with my lateness to work, gave his imagination a lot to work with. By the time I got there,though, he had discovered the YEAR of the post, and a good laugh was had by all.

There's no real moral to this story unless you seek it. It's just my own little anecdotal evidence that one should be careful about what he or she says on the net. This may seem like common sense, but it is funny how these little things can nip you in the rear. In my case, it was totally accidental.

This probably isn't all that relevent to the story. It might have been a more useful post in another story recently about somebody getting in trouble at work over something found in a search engine. No offense taken if this is considered off-topic, but yeah, employeers can see you on the net. Behave.

Re:Easy.

[jhoger]

Even easier, if you've got the stones for it: be a man.

Think of employment as an economist does: it is a kind of marketplace in which you sell your labor. Any time you don't sell is your leisure time. Every day you go to work you are deciding to sell some of your labor to a particular employer.

On an ongoing basis you work, and on that basis you employer incurs a liability TO YOU. When they write out the check, they pay off that acrued liability. In fact, you are extending them credit terms of two weeks, basically. Oh, and they also usually incur a vacation liability to you. That is the extent of who owes who.

Employment is almost always at will. So beyond the acrued payroll and vacation time and possibly contractual obligations, nobody owes anybody anything really. You are free to go. They are free to let you go.

Your employer understands that there is a marketplace in which you can sell your services. Your resume on a web site is completely natural when you understand the economics of the situation. They may "not be happy" but who cares? If an employer would actually fire you for being in the job market there's a serious problem anyway. Are they afraid you're underpaid? Are they afraid you're unhappy? Frankly, any time would be a great time for them to fix that. The fact is that if a better offer comes along the rational choice is to go elsewhere, and they should know that.

Bottom line is, don't be a wuss. There are always other jobs.

In fact, I think everyone would be better off as contractors. Then the reality of the situation would be understood more clearly by both sides.

-- John.

My boss

[Brandybuck]

My boss usually asks me where I'm sending my resume and if they have any management positions open...

Re:I never take mine down

[ottothecow]

Even if you do allow others to see it, it makes sense to simply never take it down (and always keep it up to date--so it is ready if you ever do need it). This way if your employer sees it, you can simply explain that your resume is always there (it will be there a week after you got your job and 3 years after you got your job) so it does not mean you are actively searching for a better opportunity. This could also serve to make them realize that they still have to compete with you on the labor market since your open resume could prompt a better offer even though you are not actively seeking it.

Of course, you can take all of that as a grain of salt because, while I do in fact have a resume, I'm just finishing my first year at the University of Chicago and nobody wants to give me a job anyway.

I was an HR Recruiter. WAS.

[NevarMore]

Last semester I interned at a computer consulting firm as a human resources recruiting assistant. The job was far from what I wanted to do, but I was in a specialzed political program and they felt that getting the CS major away from the keyboard would be more in line with that. I did learn a lot that I would not have learned if I were in a software development role, but I am certainly NOT an HR person. Bear with me, this is all very important for job seekers and does tie into the topic.

Anyway heres how it goes when a company doesn't do all/any of its own HR. They have a list, sometimes exclusive other times not, of HR/Consulting firms that they send job requests to. Those requests specify the length of the contract, the salary range, a brief (VERY) job description, and desired skills. It then became my bosses job to hand me that piece of paper from which I had to parse out a monster (we ONLY used monster for some reason) search string and start calling people.

First off we had an implied policy that we didn't bother with confidential resumes. Send an email and then leave it. Our response rate from those was exceedingly low, single-digit percentages.

We did have an easier time than many consulting contracting firms because nearly all of our contracts were temp-to-perm and my employer had farily good benefits. The way that works is a new hire was an employee of ours for 3 to 6 months, recieving pay and benefits from us while working for our client. At the end of that term, if the client was happy the client could then hire that employee on as thier own without paying us a finders fee. My employer got a (significant) cut, our clients got good people, and good people got full time, permanent jobs.

That sounds all well and good but human resources is not some place I can work and feel good about it. I had to look at a resume, review the stated skills in comparision to the desired skills, look at the employment history and see if/how those skills were actually used, and if that matched then I made a call (resumes with phone numbers get priority, because we can get you right away) and talked to the candidate to see if they were really interested.

Now I get to take a job description that was less than a paragraph with some notes/comments from my boss and tell (NEVER sell) the candidate about the position. Then if they were interested I had to ask questions and see if this person really had what we wanted for the job. It was hard because my boss (and by implication our clients) had very specific requriements, there was no room for 'I think this guy would be good' I had to take the vagaries of resumes and HR talk and salary requirements and quantify them. My coworkers (Hi Jeff, Julie, Lee, and Steve!) were great people and could handle that. It is very difficult.

Now coming back to the point, when we saw a resume of on of our people. We DID NOT CARE. If anything it was a good guide, as I'm reading the first few parts of the resume "Oh wow this guy would be perfect....because he is already doing (job) for (client).". I usually printed those out and used them as examples to compare to other resumes.

If you are looking for something better and not serious about going to a new job, you are wasting my time and yours. If you are "seeing whats out there" then you are a liability, it looks bad for us when an employee quits in the middle of a contract, it wastes my time, it wastes our clients time, and it shows an apalling lack of responsibility on your part. We were not hiring short-term contractors who were looking for adventure and new jobs every 3 months, we were looking for reliable, competent, full-time, well paid, permanent employees. If you want to see whats out there tell us when we call, we'll tell you what is out there, but we have other shit to do. Don't sit there chatting us up.

If you honestly are looking for a new job then I offer you the following advice. If you have an itemized list of skills, programming languages, apps etc. on your resume you need to be able to te