Had an interesting chat with a recruitment agency earlier this week regarding their consultants and LinkedIn. Firstly hats off to them for pushing the use of LinkedIn as hard as they are, it’s a recruiters gold mine if you engage and use all aspects of the site/network, we receive a lead on average once a week currently from our efforts.
What was an interesting topic of discussion was “Who owns the 1st level connections that each consultant builds as their efforts on LinkedIn, the Employer or Employee/Recruitment Consultant?
This particular recruiters feels that all of the work that is done to either build an online or offline professional network during business hours, representing their company to promote their services, and thus connecting to that individual/s is the property of the business. I can certainly understand where they are coming from however is it that straight forward?
What of proof of time of connection (where they at the current employer when they connected on LI), can any company really stipulate that they own every person that their employees come in to contact with, and is this just taking the rules to far with internal business information and knowledge. Considering a LinkedIn account is represented by an individual, under their name, what ownership can a company have? Quite often you connect with more then just professionals in your industry, how can we really define or argue the two?
Now I agree that a LinkedIn network is certainly an asset, and once an employee leaves that asset is lost, however that person still needs to be replaced, with, you would expect, a potential new asset to bring with them. Can you really prove or is it realistic to ask an employee to prove their network and when they connected with them?
What are your thoughts? Should companies have the ability to “own” the employees networks either on LinkedIn or Twitter and demand they are deleted or similar once their tenure has ended?
I’ve had similar discussions previously as well with recruiters.
Personally I wonder if this problem is more about recruiters failing to effectively leverage LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers several premium models that let you access everyone in the LinkedIn database which is even more effective than just searching people you “know” (especially when we all know recruiters target broad ranges of people and aren’t really true connections anyway).
My suspicion is recruiters are building large databases “on the cheap”, when it’s probably much more cost effective for them to pay for that professional account and get access to all the people on LinkedIn, not just the ones that the last staff member knew.
Thanks Tim, well said. The alternative payment methods with LI are certainly viable and even just having 1 account would surely have to be of value to any HR/recruitment team, internal or external.
With this however it really does minimise the engagement and involvement levels that a recruiter can establish on social sites with the simply ability to have access to everyone, really defeats the purpose of being on the site at all.
I do wonder how they can police this type of policy however and truly enforce it. Seems a bit tough for mine.
C’mon Justin… You had a cheeky grin on your face when you wrote this one didn’t you?
An individual’s network can not be taken away from them. There may be some restriction of trade contracts out there that could attempt to restrict solicitation of those contacts for a short period of time, but you can’t ask someone to delete their on-line network regardless of how, when and where it was gained. It’s the reality of on-line business networking now and employers have to come to terms with that.
The online world presents many opportunities that come at a cost or risk. But what’s the cost if you don’t take those opportunities. I think we (employers) are best to dive in and wear the costs / risks associated.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by recruitmentjob and socrecfeed, justin hillier. justin hillier said: [New Blog Post] Social Network Ownership – Tug of War? http://bit.ly/awxOjo #socialrecruiting #in [...]
Mostly the fear of loss and actual loss is unfounded or covered by existing contractual law and employer policy etc. Sure recruiters move on and take knowledge and that’s not new. A recruiter would now more easily export their connections and import to a new account but deletion would be unlikely perhaps but indeed a tug of thought process earlier on may resolve and prevent such action.
The challenge for the recruiter company is for strategy to capture, loss prevention of IP and retention e.g., not fight with recruiter networks but encourage and nurture it, connect with it [and their groups - groups] integrate with it, communicate with it and by inclusion, capture it, service it, retain it for the longer term –inbound to brand.
Interesting topic. I think the question needs to be reframed, though. There’s no question that contacts you develop in one job as an individual will stay with you when you move on. Conversely, many firms hire people because they bring their own virtual rolodex with them; it’s part of their value. Networks like LinkedIn do a good job of making those relationships explicit and more easily used.
So what does that mean for the company where you worked? I think the real question that needs to be asked is whether social networking tools can be used to represent a person-to-company relationship as well as they can be for person-to-person relationships. So rather than asking who owns the connections, the question as an owner to ask would be how can I maintain a connection with that third person even after my employee leaves? There’s some interesting potential in Facebook pages that represent companies, and probably a business opportunity for LinkedIn to make it possible for a company to have connections to its profile.
Interested to know – because I have to research and speak about it – what are some of the ways you use LinkedIn to find leads ?
I have a linkedin account that i use for personal and work related. I have over 900 connection.
I have left my previous employer and now they are trying to state they have ownership of my linkedin connections even though they have an excel document of every one anyway. They have sent messages to every one stating that I have left and to contact them if I have been in contact with them. Baring in mind that these messages have been sent to friends and family as well!
They are trying to take me to court if i dont agree to their terms. My understanding is that linkedin is a personal networking website, it is like them saying they want to control my facebook and myspace account too!
Does any one have any guidance on this real hard evidence not just opinions? I have seen about the court case about hays Vs The guy who left Hays and started his own business. This is different as i have not stolen contacts from them. i had these contacts on my linkedin networking site before they have gone onto the work database.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Hi GS (and others reading this thread),
I’m a reporter with Workforce Management researching a story about social media “portability” and ownership. I’d like to talk more about your experience, GS. I am willing to keep your identity confidential.
Please email me at efrauenheim@workforce.com or call me at +1 415 538 0212.
Thanks,
Ed Frauenheim
G S
I have had a similar issue. I’m a recruiter who put a great deal of time & effort into building my social network on Linkedin, Twitter & Facebook. I had my Linkedin account for years before I started with Recruitment Agency A but I started my twitter & professional facebook accounts when I was working at this agency as a way of finding candidates. I now have over 3500 ‘friends’ on facebook who are industry contacts from all around the world, not necessary clients/candidates of Recruitment Agency A. I maintained these accounts in my own time, researching blogs to post etc however I did sometimes use them in my role to find candidates or connect with clients (mostly on Linkedin). All these accounts are under my personal name & linked to a gmail account.
I resigned from Recruitment Agency A four months ago. When I resigned I refused to give them my passwords to these accounts, when my Director screamed at me & attempted to bully me into giving her the details I gave them my facebook password only (my other passwords were different) & then when I got home clicked the link FB sent me asking if I had authorized the ‘change of email address’ stating that I had not, got control of it back & changed my email & PW. They hadn’t attempted to shut the account down, just change it so I no longer had access to my own FB identity.
A month after I left I tried to log into my Linkedin account for the first time since I resigned & couldn’t access it. I logged a lost password request but nothing came through. After a few days I realised my account had been hacked as my account was adding new contacts without me having access to it. I contacted Linkedin who confirmed my previous employer had hacked my account, changed the password & email address to my bosses email account & was operating my account with my identity. I regained access to my account & changed the email back to my original email account. I didn’t take it further as I wasn’t sure what my rights were in regards to this.
After my three month restriction was over I accepted a role with a new agency. Since discovering that I have now started in competition with them Recruitment Agency A have sent me a threatening legal letter claiming ownership over my facebook account.
No way I’m giving it to them as I worked hard to build up an online identity & I don’t feel that they have ownership over this or all the contacts from around the globe that I have added to my network claiming that they are ‘clients’ of Recruitment Agency A.
G S – What was your outcome?
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