Ethics Question

Hi all!  Sorry to be so late getting this month's newsletter to you but I've been away attending the semi-annual board meeting for the National Association of Personnel Services.  As I told you last month, our firm is a member of NAPS, the national professional association for search and staffing firms that also sponsors the Education Certification program (CPC/CTS).  I wanted to share with you something that I thought was pretty compelling that came up at our board meeting that will affect all of you one way or another at some time in your career, either as a hiring manager or as a prospective job-seeker.

A complaint was submitted to our ethics committee from a company who received a resume of a supposed prospective candidate from a professional recruiter.  The candidate was extremely qualified for the open position and the hiring manager was quite excited about the prospect.  The client contacted the candidate to set up an interview only to find out that the candidate knew NOTHING about the company, the opportunity, and had even NEVER HEARD OF THE RECRUITER that sent the resume!!  The company representative asked our NAPS Association to provide some sort of censure to the search firm (who was actually not a member of NAPS) and cast in concrete an ammendment to our bylaws specifying that all search firms that are members of NAPS must NOT send any candidate's resume to a client without informing the candidate first, or forfeit their membership and have their Certificaton revoked.  While this seems like a very straight-forward open and shut "no brainer", after significant discussion among the board, we came to realize that there are some candidates who are open to having the recruiter do some "browsing" the market on their behalf which would include sending a "blind" resume to create interest in a specific client's facility.  This would fly in the face of such censure.  After much discussion (including other valid options like the above), we agreed to put out a statement to our members recommending the client's recommendation as a "best practices" that we would like to see our members follow, but chose NOT to "legislate" this to our members.  I'm interested in getting your thoughts and feedback on this matter.  You can give your input by either participating in the discussion stream on the NAPS website (www.recruitinglilfe.com) that will start later this week.  Alternatively, I'm going to post a copy of this onto my blog and you can dialogue with me that way as well.  I look forward to your input and hope that you continue to value the high ethical standards that we at Whitaker strive to attain.