Stealing the Competition’s Employees
June 20, 2011
In a recent article about employee poaching Mark Hendricks profiled the common practice of poaching a competitor’s talent. In the article he noted:
- Employers like to hire people who are employed, not unemployed;
- Reaching potential hires through social networking tools like LinkedIn has made poaching easier; and
- Potential employers need to worry about non-solicitation agreements, non-compete agreements and other confidentiality provisions a poached employee may have signed.
My thoughts:
- Do your due diligence in determining what post-employment covenants a potential hire may have -this may impact whether you want to make the hire;
- Make the employee certify in writing that there are no post-employment covenants that would affect their future employment;
- Make it clear that if the case turns out that there are post-employment covenants, the employer may terminate the employee and not necessarily defend them in any type of lawsuit;
- Make new employees certify that they have not taken any confidential or proprietary information that belongs to their former employer; and
- Remember – what goes around, comes around.
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