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I work at company A, and my (US) employment agreement includes a non-solicitation clause that's active during and up to one year after my employment.

Recently I've been looking for other jobs; through a third-party recruiter, I interviewed with company B.

Now, the recruiter told me that there's another company A employee who has an interview scheduled with company B. The recruiter asked me whether I want to talk to that person to tell them about my experience with company B's interview process. The recruiter told me they have not told that person about me.

If I say yes to that and talk to the other person about the interview process at company B, would I be breaching my non-solicitation agreement to company A? Does it depend on some details of that conversation?

I'm interested in the answer both from a purely legal perspective (i.e., could I get sued?) and from a professional norms/ethics perspective (i.e., would I be perceived as someone who easily breaks agreements?).

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  • Hey user, I fear that your question may be offtopic here. We don't give legal counsel, for that you should consult a lawyer. I think that even the guys at law.stackexchange.com don't give legal advise but perhaps you can find questions/answers there that are helpful to you. I suggest you read your agreement carefully as the answer is there somewhere.
    – DarkCygnus
    Sep 2, 2020 at 5:38

2 Answers 2

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A lot of recruitment agencies ask about your interview experience, so they can give their other cannidates a head start with this company. If you are ok with that you could just share your interview experience with the recruiter and he/she can then pass it on to your coworker/other cannidates.

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  • If you are giving the information to the recruiter specifically so it gets to the other employee, then there's no real ethical/legal difference.
    – mcknz
    Sep 2, 2020 at 7:46
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Non-solicitation agreements are often illegal. They are illegal to such a degree that Apple, Facebook, Google and some others have been given $100 million fines for non-solicitation agreements. The other employee has already made his decision to look for jobs elsewhere, they already contacted a recruiter, and they already have arranged an interview, so you are in no way enticing them to leave.

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    My impression was that these tech giants got fined over agreements between companies not to recruit each other's employees. Is there a case where a company got fined over agreements that its (ex-)employees can't recruit its employees?
    – user121076
    Sep 2, 2020 at 15:42

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