Going around a recruiter who submits unsolicited candidates

Question

Recently, my company received an unsolicited email from a recruiter with information about a potential candidate.

We don't normally work with recruiters and our job ads all say 'No recruiters'.

This recruiter provided the potential candidate's first name and current employer and that was more than enough information to find them on LinkedIn.

Is it possible to approach the candidate directly?

On the one hand, the recruiter approached us against our request and with no reasonable expectation that we would do business with him. He provided us with the information of his own volition and we used that to access public information.

On the other hand... it kinda feels icky. What is the best way to approach this candidate with out involving the recruiter? Or are we obliged to include the recruiter if we wish to go forward with this candidate?

Answer 1

1. Ignore the fact that the recruiter sent you the unsolicited lead. Proceed as you would if you discovered the candidate yourself. You have no business relationship with them and therefore you don't owe anything to anyone.
2. Double check the above with your company's HR/Lawyer to be on the safe side.

But let me expand on why it's OK to proceed ignoring the recruiter:

Imagine it wasn't. Imagine that any time any recruiter said anything about a candidate (whether you asked them to or not) they were off-limits unless you paid the recruiter money.

What sort of a world would we be living in?

Well, I'll tell you. If I woke up in that world tomorrow, the first thing I'd do is write a python script that scrapes people's accounts on LinkedIn. Then I'd flood every company in every area with their leads. Then I'd proceed to write another python script that periodically scrapes LinkedIn accounts and checks whether my 'submitted' candidates got any jobs. If they did, I'd promptly ask the companies for money and have a lawyer on my speed dial.

Clearly this is madness, and it's no way to run a civilized society.

EDIT

In response to some comments: contract law requires both parties to agree to a contract for it to be valid. There is such a thing as an implicit agreement, and that is the grey area which makes this question interesting. That being said, in this case the information is being divulged in the 'contract' and is unsolicited. It's similar to me walking up to you and saying "Walmart has engine oil on sale for $X, how about I go buy it and change your oil for $X + $Y?" and you responding "Not interested, but Walmart has engine oil on sale? I'm going to go and buy it!". So do I have a legal basis to say "No way man, now you owe me money because you used part of my service that I was trying to sell you... you would have never known that you can get cheap engine oil at Walmart if I hadn't told you!". The answer is no, I don't have a legal basis for that, because if that was the case then I'd be able to forge all sorts of ridiculous contracts implicitly.

More broadly, as my answer tries to demonstrate, a system of contract laws that made them binding by providing information in the offer if the information was acted on would be dysfunctional.

As always, I am not a lawyer, seek legal advice to cover your behind as per the second sentence at the top of this answer. If the OP follows BOTH #1 and #2 at the top, then nothing bad will happen to them.

Answer 2

I suggest replying to the recruiters email, cc'ing the candidate, saying that you do not accept referals from recruiters, and that if the candidate is interested in the position, he will have to apply for it himself.

This gets everything out in the open -- making it clear your company does not pay a finders fee, and that the recruiter contacted YOU about this candidate. It gives the candidate the facts about your interaction with the recruiter (who may be just sending out random spam in the hopes that some of it sticks), and lets him know there is an open position. And if the candidate applies, you may get a new employee, without having to sneak around.

Answer 3

Honestly, I'd recommend dropping the recruiter's e-mail in the bit-bucket, and the recruiter's e-mail address in the spam filter.

If the recruiter is willing to ignore the 'no recruiters' in the ad, then there's a good chance he's unethical in other ways, and may well have exaggerated the candidate's qualifications. Which would mean that contacting the candidate is just a waste of time for you.

Heck, for all you know, the candidate isn't actually working with the recruiter, and the recruiter is just trying to entice the candidate with an interview!

So I'd just drop the whole mess in the trash and forget them both.

Answer 4

My first resort here would be to send the email to my HR recruitment department. But then that's how my particular companies have always worked. They do staff interview intake, and are most familiar with the company policies here. They also work hand-in-hand with the lawyers, so that mitigates the obvious "go ask a lawyer" answer. And it ensures that your company acts more or less consistently. If each hiring manager makes up his own policy, believe me, recruiters and candidates will find the weakest link and work to exploit it.

Yeah, but will we get in trouble if we contact the guy without the recruiter?

Answer is - this is really, really a lawyer question. There's definitely a traceable record - the recruiter's email to you is copied to umpteen places in your corporate infrastructure, as (if there are moderate security practices) is your behavior of going to LinkedIn and checking up on the guy. In fact, I can see who browsed me on linked in - so if you were logged into LinkedIn, there's a record in the guy's profile that you looked him up.

The timeline is pretty easy to trace, and the recruiter doesn't have be in the right to start a lawsuit. How much legal risk your company wants to take is really up to your law department. And when you are a manager following up with a candidate, you are absolutely a representative of your company.

Another question worth asking: Is this a giant waste of time?

My experience has been that unsolicited recruitment contacts are among the least successful parts of the recruiting process. Which is one reason why the companies I've worked with are pretty careful with recruiters and making sure they don't waste the time of expensive technical managers.

You are in the dark on two key things:

• whether the recruiter understands anything about what your company really wants or needs
• whether this candidate has any interest in working on this job for this company

In my opinion this contact is about as useful as if you had searched LinkedIn yourself - which is something you might consider doing if you find this candidate useful... you may actually find a whole pool of potential candidates and why waste time on someone who is also legally problematic?

Answer 5

Does the recruiter somehow "own" this candidate? Is the candidate, or even the reference, the intellectual property of the recruiter? No.

There is a decision to be made here. This person contacted you with a recommendation of a client. You specifically said "no recruiters", and they contacted you anyway. You have three choices:

• Assume that, despite the person identifying themselves as a recruiter, their communication despite your prohibition on recruiter e-mails means that this person is not contacting you in the context of being a recruiter. Otherwise, they would not have contacted you, because it's extremely poor professional etiquette to disregard your wishes in a business transaction (which this is).

  If they are not a recruiter, then they are simply a professional acquaintance of the candidate, which they are referring to you. You don't have to pay out for employee referrals, or even customer referrals (either for business or employment candidates), much less for referrals from complete strangers. You may do so, as a courtesy, but it's your prerogative. So, consider the candidate as a referral.

  You're on pretty firm legal ground here, but not for the stated reason. It would, in a court, be very clear that this person was a recruiter and was representing themselves as such to you. However, it was unsolicited. You have no legal contract with this recruiter, and the consideration of his candidate does not create one, either express or implied. One caveat; a recruiter with whom you communicated regarding this position has an argument that this communication is an implicit invitation to "show their wares" as it were, and that does create an implied contract should you consider their candidate. If you've never heard of this guy or his agency, there is no such risk.

• Treat the recruiter as exactly that. You said "no referrals". They violated this imperative. They should not benefit from violating your trust, and unfortunately that extends to their candidate, for whom they are acting as agent.

  So, send a letter of rejection to the recruiter, and to their candidate directly, explaining clearly that you did not, and will not, consider the candidate's qualifications in this decision; the decision to reject the candidate was made solely on the basis of a gross breach of professional etiquette by their agent the recruiter. That should be a huge red flag to the candidate that they are working with the wrong headhunter, and that realization by both recruiter and candidate should make the recruiter shape up.

• Bend your rules. While you said "no referrals", it could have been an honest mistake. If the candidate looks good on paper, bring him in, and if he's hired, somebody's gotta pay the recruiter.

Whatever you do, don't just circular-file it (electronically or otherwise). If you won't consider it, tell them that (and tell both of them that). Things won't change, in your inbox or anyone else's, if you ignore it; recruiters, and frankly candidates, are used to being ignored. They simply try again, and again, in hopes that they eventually catch you in a situation where you'd be more welcoming. By telling them that you received the e-mail, read, and understood it, and are rejecting it out of hand because its arrival in your inbox demonstrates extremely poor professional etiquette with which you will have no part, then the recruiter, and the candidate, receive behavioral feedback. The recruiter has just gotten his candidate black-balled from your organization (at least this hiring round), and importantly, now they both know that.

Answer 6

In the interest of offering a balancing opinion, "don't attribute to malice what can be explained with simple stupidity".

Sure, this could be a very shady recruiter trying to pollute your recruitment pool. But it could just as well be the equivalent of a sales-person at a consultancy company cold-calling potential clients, or Suzy Workseeker sending her resume to every company she can think of to see if anyone takes the bite.

The recruiter may not even understand the issues his actions are raising. Far from being unethical, he/she may just be ignorant and/or inexperienced (a state of being we all exist in at least once in our lives).

But, if you really are set on hiring this person, then you may be in trouble but that is all depending on the jurisdiction you are in and what contracts and agreements are set up. The main sticking point here is what type of agreement exist between the recruiter and the candidate. The standard agreement I've seen prevents the candidate from directly accepting work from a company that the recruiter has been in contact with on his or her behalf (i.e. your recruitment is "polluted" since you have no choice but to go through the recruiter to get this person).

So, the question then becomes: "have the recruiter been in contact with you on the candidates behalf?" Well, that's the kind of question that keeps the world full of lawyers. A number of factors can play in here and the legal determination differs on where you are. Between the candidate and the recruiter exists a good-faith assumption that the recruiter will make his best effort to satisfy his side of the bargain. Unsolicited inquiries may be far away enough to void their contract. It could also be in this case that the candidate can accept a direct approach and defer any claim from the recruiter onto you. And since the initial contact was not only unsolicited, it was expressively unwanted, the claim falls.

Bottom line: I'm just a random guy on the internet without any legal training or knowledge of laws and regulations where you are. If you're really set on hiring this person, unfortunately it sounds like you need to talk to a lawyer. It's a sad state, but there you are.

If you're not intending to hire this person, you could contact the recruiter directly, explain what his email caused and if it ever happens again, you will refrain from ever using their services, advice all your contacts to do the same and report them to whatever equivalence of "better business bureau" exists in your area. You could also contact the candidate and explain what has happened and why you are now unable to hire him/her regardless if you wanted to or not.

Answer 7

I know this question is older and the situation that it asks about has long since been resolved one way or the other, but I want to add an answer because I don't think the existing answers adequately address the question.

The best approach would be to simply take no action on the potential candidate. By doing that you protect yourself and your company from an ethically and legally gray area. Legally speaking if you simply do nothing toward the candidate then the recruiter is clearly not entitled to any compensation. As others have pointed out, if you hire the candidate you may or may not have a legal obligation to pay the recruiter. In any case, the recruiter would certainly have a basis for bringing a lawsuit, and even if they did not win the suit, the defense of the suit could be costly to your company. As others have suggested, you could avoid having to make the decision on that basis by passing it by your company's legal department.

I think the bigger issue is what you are ethically obligated to do. I'm not a recruiter, and I know that a some recruiters are sleazy. What this guy did does not sound sleazy to me. He's taking a chance that even though you said no recruiters that you might like the candidate and he might end up getting a successful placement and a commission. On the other hand, I feel that taking the "fruits of his labors" without compensating the recruiter is sleazy. Since I place a high value on not being sleazy, if it were me, I would simply pass on the candidate.

Answer 8

First, putting no recruiters in the ad for the position will carry little to no weight in court, should it get there. If you or your company have ever accepted a submission from a recruiter through an ad that said no recruiters then you loose any weight it did carry.

If you or your company have ever entered into a relationship, even if it was only to accept resume's for consideration for a position with your company, then you will be bound by what ever agreement you agreed to at that time, unless you can show that you have documented that the company was aware that your business relationship was terminated and that any future submissions would not be bound by the earlier agreement.

Assuming you have have no relationship now or in the past with this recruiter or his firm, you and your company likely have no obligation to the recruiter or to their firm. However, assuming the candidate agreed to work with the recruiters firm, the candidate may have an obligation to restrict their communication with you and not cut the recruiter out. What you intend as a good faith gesture to the prospect, may end up costing them a significant sum.

If you reach out to the candidate and suggest that they submit the resume through your normal submission process, because you got the name from the recruiter, these restrictions on them will apply. At some point that recruiter is liable to reach out to the candidate and find out they had an interview, were hired, or even that you requested their resume. Advising the candidate not to share this information with the recruiter could end up with you facing civil and potentially criminal charges. So, if you still want to go forward, before you do, consult your attorney.

Should that candidate decide to submit to your company independently, then you should be OK to proceed. Though I would still get the attorney involved just to make sure everything is documented properly to show that this was not an intentional interference in the consulting companies relationship with your candidate.

Answer 9

ignore the recruiter, blacklist him, and cautiously approach the candidate. Quite likely he never asked the candidate whether he was interested, just ripped a batch of resumes off Monsterboard, removed the contact info, and submitted them to a few dozen companies each.
You owe the recruiter nothing, seeing as you never contracted him, he approached you unasked for.

Answer 10

As an ethical recruiter it is horrible to see so much hostility towards my trade. 98% of the time the client would have never come across a candidate that has been speced into a company, therefore it is an introduction to a previously unknown candidate.

The main reason a recruiter sends unsolicited profiles is because HR or internal rec teams refuse to work with us, they think they can do it all on their own. Go and speak to a senior manager on the other hand who has been waiting for a new team member for months, I assure you it will be a whole different conversation. I have found that internal rec and HR will put their own priorities in front of business need. Sure I may even do the same thing if someone came along and did my job more efficiently than I could.

The bottom line is, if you like the person a recruiter sends you, work something out because at the end of the day the value of the new employee should be far greater than any recruitment fees!