Barbarians at the Gate

I am always amazed when I am approached by a client who has a retention problem. It’s always interesting to note that they have not dealt with some of the small things that can be done to somewhat lock the door from the barbarians at the gate, those pesky headhunters.

Rule #1: Make sure employee/telephone directories are not available for download and make it extremely difficult for anyone including employees to print or copy it. It’s incredible how often I have been able to go on a clients website and download a complete employee directory with employee titles, phone numbers and email addresses. What are companies thinking? Nortel Networks (now defunct) had a downloadable application of their entire employee population, including all executive employees when I first got there. It was one of the first things I got rid of to slow down poaching.

Rule #2: Train admin’s, secretaries, executive assistants and any and all staff and or services that manage incoming calls and emails to the ruses headhunters and recruiters use to identify or access company talent. I train corporate teams in these approaches to both recruit from companies and or repel competitors. Believe me when I say how porous most companies doors are. Secretaries handing out entire organization charts, employees talking about who the most gifted engineers are, even employees within your own company potentially poaching from you for the competition. Amazing.

Rule #3: Complete an audit of your companies security defenses against poachers and headhunters as well as the biggest threat your own employees, especially the ones that are disgruntled and on the way out. Once you have gone thru a structured process looking at all the possible routes headhunters use you can start blocking the holes, at the very least making them much smaller.

These tactics will not stop employees from leaving and or prevent headhunters from poaching your employees but it will reduce attrition as well as reduce the noise in the company about recruiting offers that employees have received. These are only a few approaches I have used to help companies, if you want to hear about the full portfolio, get in touch.

For more go to: http://attackdefenddisrupt.wordpress.com

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Comment by Mike Ososki on September 19, 2011 at 3:17pm: Barbarians? Poachers? Harsh words for professionals who help high quality candidates advance their careers. Companies do not own employees. They are not property to be stolen. Fighting to keep them in the dark about potentially stronger opportunities is a fear-driven act that is indeed from the barbaric age.

Comment by Francois Guay on September 19, 2011 at 4:14pm: Thanks for the comment Mike. I agree with your comments but there is always another side of the coin.

Having been on both sides of the fence..in a senior VP HR role and in the role of getting talent from companies...you do sometimes see competitors as barbarians, as poachers, etc... On the other hand I have no trouble being called a barbarian or poacher by a company I am recruiting from. I see it as a compliment... I expect many will object to my say it as it is approach over my coming posts and blogs and that's ok. I am open as per my previous post to criticism and corrections...but it will not stray me from my path of directness.

Comment by Amy Ala Miller on September 19, 2011 at 4:21pm: weren't there previous comments to this post...?

Comment by Francois Guay on September 19, 2011 at 4:33pm: Yep in being a newbie to Recruitingblogs I mistakenly deleted them..

Comment by lisa rokusek on September 19, 2011 at 4:33pm: Francois did you start fresh? Any way to get the other comments over here?

Comment by David on September 19, 2011 at 4:35pm: I have seen several posts from you..."newbie"

Comment by Francois Guay on September 19, 2011 at 4:36pm: Old posting. Not sure if I can bring them back, will look I deleted them from what I thought was my inbox but it was the blog inbox. Ouch

Comment by Sandra McCartt on September 19, 2011 at 5:41pm: It might have been in the best interest of Nortel to open the gates and let the Barbarians in. Management didn't do exactly a whoopee do job of running that debacle. 60,000 laid off and a massive shortfall in their pension trust before they chaptered and the civil suits started flying because the CEO cashed out before the stock fell to . 47 cents a share.

Comment by Francois Guay on September 19, 2011 at 7:10pm: Yep, Nortel made a ton of mistakes as did a ton of other high tech companies, so whatare you trying to say???, but it was an amazing company to work for. The intellectual property resident in the minds of employees and as you saw recently in the billion+patent purchase was extraordinary.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on September 19, 2011 at 11:49pm: Yes the patent portfolio auction was impressive, 4.5 billion right along with the 11.l billion in offsetting debt.

Perhaps it is Karma that when a company becomes paranoid about the Barbarians at the gate all the Barbarians have to do is wait for the implosion. When companies build walls and plug holes and become secret they forget that they are behind those walls. Perhaps they were so focused on keeping secrets and locking doors that they forgot how to sell those products and processes that their employees developed. It wasn't the Barbarians at the Gate that brought them down. It was perhaps the emperors within. Or so it seems to this Barbarian. It's my take that paranoid processes directed at keeping people in the dark normally results in revolution. A headhunter can not recruit a happy employee.

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